ARISTOCRATIC WOMEN

The Social, Political and Cultural History of Rich and Poweful Women

Part 1: The Correspondence of Jemima, Marchioness Gray (1722-97) and her Circle

Publisher's Note

“What is the history of rich, powerful and establishment women?  Few people write it, so the question is rarely asked.  Historians of power are usually male and concentrate upon men.  And most historians of women chronicle the dispossessed and the rebellious.  Moreover, there is still a tendency to assume that separate spheres was not just a powerful ideology, but also an accurate description of how the two sexes behaved.  We ask very different questions about women in the past than we do about their men folk.”

LINDA COLLEY

Professor of History, Yale University in an article reviewing Stella Tillyard’s Aristocrats in The Sunday Times, 17 April 1994

This new project concentrates on substantial and revealing clusters of correspondence between aristocratic women in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, enabling the social, political and cultural history of this landed elite to be studied.

Whilst their husbands may have held high political office and gained the lion’s share of recognition at the time and posthumously, these women often wielded real financial power, were active in local social welfare, actively debated political issues and read widely.  Ladies of leisure they were not.

Their influence as “the power behind the throne” is perhaps less important than their influence within their own peer groups.  Fashions and trends pass from one member of the circle to another.  New ideas are shared, marital lapses are judged and each acts as a sympathetic listener in an epistolary relationship.  This project will help scholars to understand the development of taste in this period, as prints and paintings, as well as books read, concerts attended, and new plays seen are discussed in correspondence.

Part 1 of this project is based on the correspondence of Jemima, Marchioness Grey (1722-1797) and her circle; which included her daughters, Amabel and Mary, as well as the noted essayist, Catherine Talbot.  It is drawn from the Wrest Park (Lucas) Archive deposited at the Bedfordshire County Record Office.

Brief biographies of the correspondents are given in the Introduction which follows, and the Extracts from the Correspondence give an idea of the range and content of the letters.  Suffice to say that this is an unusually rich collection of long, descriptive letters discussing contemporary politics, social life, houses and gardens, country house life and life at court, reading and writing, travels, leisure pursuits, family life, medical problems, child-rearing and friendship.

1,832 letters and 9 volumes of transcripts provide scholars with an opportunity to examine the inter-relationships between the mother, her daughters and their friends.

Scholars will find that this is a marvellous source for studying topics such as taste, consumerism, patronage, household and estate management, education and reading, class and sisterhood, as well as giving primary documentation of the aspirations and activities of women in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century England.

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