The Ladies of Llangollen by Fiona Brideoake

Desire, Indeterminacy, and the Legacies of Criticism

A study of Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the Irish gentlewomen who eloped in 1778 and lived together at Plas Newydd in Llangollen, Wales, for fifty years. Fiona Brideoake examines how they have been narrated as romantic friends and as lesbian forebears, the place of their servant Mary Caryll in their household, their library and ties to the Bluestockings, and how writers from Anna Seward, Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Byron and Anne Lister to the suffrage movement and Mary Gordon's 1936 biography made them into 'the Ladies of Llangollen.

Details

ISBN9781611487619
Copyright Date2017
Publication DateApril 6, 2017
PublisherBloomsbury Academic
FormatHardcover
No. of Pages331
LanguageEnglish
NotesPublished by Bucknell University Press. Setting: Plas Newydd, Llangollen, Wales, 1780 to 1829.
GenreHistory; Lesbian Studies; Literary Criticism
SubjectCouples - Biography. - Wales; Female Friendship - History. - Wales; Female Friendship In Literature; Lesbianism in literature; Llangollen (Wales) - Biography; Upper Class Women - Biography. - Ireland