Hester Lynch Piozzi (formerly Thrale, née Salusbury) is well known as the friend of Dr Samuel Johnson, and the hostess of a brilliant literary circle. She was at the heart of a nexus of writers, thinkers, artists, dilettanti and society figures, both male and female, which included James Boswell, Dr Charles Burney, Frances Burney, the ‘Ladies of Llangollen’, John Delap, Robert Merry, Elizabeth Montagu, Arthur Murphy, Samuel Lysons, Thomas Pennant, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Anna Seward, Sarah Siddons and Horace Walpole, as well as Johnson himself. Hester and the other female members of the circle are now the subject of renewed scholarly interest from contemporary cultural and gender historians.
The John Rylands Library holds the world’s most important collection of letters and papers relating to Hester and her circle. The collection contains over 150 letters from Hester to Johnson and approximately 2,800 items of correspondence in total, as well as journals, literary manuscripts, financial papers, legal documents and title deeds relating to the Salusbury and Thrale estates.
The letters allow us to glimpse into the domestic life of Hester and her husband, Henry Thrale, and into their financial arrangements, as well as providing references to politics and current affairs. They touch on individuals represented elsewhere in the Rylands collection, such as the Ladies of Llangollen. They also fill an important gap in the estate and business correspondence already held by the Library.
Beyond their value for those interested in Hester, her life and her circle, the letters are also likely to be of wider interest to gender and social historians.
