Hester Lynch Piozzi

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Standard Name: Piozzi, Hester Lynch
Birth Name: Hester Lynch Salusbury
Married Name: Hester Lynch Thrale
Married Name: Hester Lynch Piozzi
Pseudonym: H: L: T.
Pseudonym: An Old Acquaintance of the Public
Pseudonym: An Old Woman
Self-constructed Name: H: L: P.
Used Form: Hester Thrale
Hester Lynch Thrale, later Hester Lynch Piozzi , was by inclination and practice a woman of letters as well as a woman of the world. She loved recording facts and details; she was an incisive critic (of real learning) and a great entertainer. She wrote poems, translations, essays, letters, journals, memoirs, and works of scholarship, and she published both during the later eighteenth and during the earlier nineteenth century.
Half-length engraving of Hester Lynch Piozzi by M. Meyer, from portrait by J. Jackson, May 1810. She is seated, and is in mourning, wearing a simple dark dress with a cloak around her shoulders, and a large hat decorated with a bow. Her name is below: "Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi".

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Lucy Aikin
LA met Hester Lynch Piozzi in or near Bath.
Aikin, Lucy. Memoirs, Miscellanies and Letters. Editor Le Breton, Philip Hemery, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green.
115-16
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
The Critical Review assumed the author was male. It thought the versification monotonous but warmly praised both preface and plays.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
24 (1798): 1-22
Initial reaction from individuals (mostly favourable) concentrated on the puzzle of authorship...
Textual Production Beryl Bainbridge
BB published another historical novel, According to Queeney, about Hester Thrale and Samuel Johnson , whose narrative sticks unusually close to its sources.
Eilenberg, Susan. “Leaf, Button, Dog”. London Review of Books, pp. 13-15.
13
Performance of text Beryl Bainbridge
In a spin-off from According to Queeney, BB wrote a theatre sketch about Johnson and Thrale , with music, which she and Richard Ingrams performed together at Stoke-on-Trent on 15 August 2002.
King, Brendan. Beryl Bainbridge. Bloomsbury .
463-4
Literary responses Anna Letitia Barbauld
The Critical Review gave high praise to each of the series. So did the Monthly, which also cracked her anonymity from the beginning.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
46 (1778): 160; 47 (1779): 320
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
191-2
Vulnerable as a Dissenter,...
Textual Production Samuel Beckett
In late 1937 SB was at work on a play about the relationship between Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale ,
Cohn, Ruby. Back to Beckett. Princeton University Press.
ix-x
which he intended to begin with her death (many years, therefore, after the relationship...
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...
Friends, Associates Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Frances Burney preferred HMB , as more kind and gentle, to her sister Frances Bowdler. Burney amusingly records a visit by herself, HMB and others, to Lady Miller of Batheaston on 8 June 1780, when...
Friends, Associates Henrietta Maria Bowdler
One of HMB 's male friends was James Plumptre , younger brother of the writers Anne and Annabella (though the sisters' radical politics were diametrically opposed to those of the Bowdler family). By 1802 she...
Reception Henrietta Maria Bowdler
The sermons met with immediate and continuing success, reaching nearly fifty editions. (OCLC WorldCat lists no known copy of the first.) HMB found herself in correspondence with half the leaders of high-minded thought in...
Intertextuality and Influence Angela Brazil
In addition to the whimsy which fairies regularly elicited from AB , this volume combines comedy and horror in the dinner menu of an ogre in The Enchanted Fiddle, which runs from Ploughboy Soup...
Publishing Margaret Bryan
The full title runs A Compendious System of Astronomy, in a course of familiar lectures; in which the principles of that science are clearly elucidated, so as to be intelligible to those who have not...
Literary responses Frances Burney
Hester Thrale recorded a significant dissenting voice: nine months after publication, Mrs Montagu cannot bear Evelina.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.
172
The stumbling-block was probably the low elements of the book.
Fictionalization Frances Burney
Bibliographer James Raven notes a crescendo in novelistic echoes of FB 's works during the 1780s. Burney's brother Charles , for instance, noted borrowings from both Evelina and Cecilia in his review for the Monthly...
Friends, Associates Frances Burney
FB made friends in the older generation as well as her own. The whole Burney family loved and were loved by David Garrick . Sir Joshua Reynolds , who lived barely fifty yards away from...

Timeline

July 1773: The Westminster Magazine printed, along with...

Building item

July 1773

The Westminster Magazine printed, along with its account of Oxford University 's annual degree-giving, an article by L. P.On the Propriety of Bestowing Academical Honours on the Ladies.

January 1781-December 1782: The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties...

Writing climate item

January 1781-December 1782

The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...

April 1782: Hester Thrale recorded in her journal a poem...

Women writers item

April 1782

Hester Thrale recorded in her journal a poem by Anne Hunter which seems to be the first English rendering of a Native American death song.

April 1789: The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward's...

Women writers item

April 1789

The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward 's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.

1 April 1789: Hester Lynch Piozzi (a propos reports about...

Building item

1 April 1789

Hester Lynch Piozzi (a propos reports about Marie Antoinette ) indignantly recorded what she presents as if it was her first encounter with lesbianism.

7 December 1789: Hester Lynch Piozzi heard the African John...

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7 December 1789

Hester Lynch Piozzi heard the African John Frederick Bridgetower speaking in public at Bath, to great applause, and wrote how Dr. Johnson would have adored that Man!

January 1793: Hester Piozzi reported the indignant melancholy...

Building item

January 1793

Hester Piozzi reported the indignant melancholy of the actress Sarah Siddons , who had been infected with syphilis by her husband.

By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...

Women writers item

By 22 July 1797

William Beckford published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.

1 August 1815: The surveyor William Smith dated his first-ever...

Building item

1 August 1815

The surveyor William Smith dated his first-ever geological map of Britain; the national Geological Society cold-shouldered him and published its own map, five years later, which was essentially a plagiarism of his.

29 April 1852: Physician and polymath Peter Mark Roget published...

Writing climate item

29 April 1852

Physician and polymath Peter Mark Roget published his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases; it went through 25 editions in its first two decades, and remained an influential writing tool into the twenty-first century.

6 May 2009: The antiquarian book collection of the late...

Women writers item

6 May 2009

The antiquarian book collection of the late Paula Fentress Peyraud (the largest in private hands), auctioned in New York, fetched more than $1.5 million US. Books by women between 1760 and 1830 predominated.

Texts

Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson. T. Cadell, 1786.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. British Synonymy. G.G. and J. Robinson, 1794.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch, editor. Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson. A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1788.
Shaw, William, and Hester Lynch Piozzi. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson. Editor Sherbo, Arthur, Oxford University Press, 1974.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany. A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1789.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Retrospection. J. Stockdale, 1801.
Johnson, Samuel, and Hester Lynch Piozzi. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Chapman, Robert William, Clarendon Press, 1984.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. The Piozzi Letters. Editors Bloom, Edward A. and Lillian D. Bloom, University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses, 2002.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. The Thrales of Streatham Park. Editor Hyde, Mary, Harvard University Press, 1977.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Thraliana. Editor Balderston, Katharine, Clarendon, 1942.
Piozzi, Hester Lynch. Three Warnings to John Bull Before He Dies. R. Faulder, 1798.