The Ladies of Llangollen, Anne Lister, Anna Seward, and the problem of "Modern History's First Lesbians"
Lesbians, sapphics, tribades, lesbi-gays, dykes, clitorist, beanflicker, Amy-John, clam smacker, scissor sister, invert. There’s plenty of names for women who love women, but what is our history, and who was the first lezza?
Historical Sapphism
Some historians believe that prior to the twentieth century there was simply no such thing as female homoeroticism, even arguing that women prior to this century couldn’t experience ‘lesbianism’ or lesbian sex because such concepts were invented by sexologists in the late nineteenth century. It’s laughable, and a brief look into the history books tell us quite opposite. In an article published in 2017, Anna Clark discusses historic sapphic subcultures among dancers and prostitutes, especially in metropolitan Paris in the early eighteenth-century. (Of course it's Paris.) Additionally, recent study of ‘deviant’ sexualities in European courts have explored Christina of Sweden’s affairs with women, notably Ebba Spare, as well as Marie Antoinette’s ‘lesbian’ sexual exploits which were the subject of several pamphlets during the French Revolution. Furthermore, in her 1789 denunciation, Hester Thrale Piozzi described Marie Antoinette as “the Head of a Set of Monsters call’d by each other Sapphists”
Used liberally in this article and by this historian generally, the terms 'Sapphic', and ‘Sapphist’ were understood to be insults relating to female homoeroticism based on the comprehension that the Ancient Greek poet Sappho had sexual and romantic relationships with women as early as the fifteenth century. Sappho is also where we get the term ‘lesbian’, as this was the term for people from the Isle of Lesbos, where she lived. This terminology is evidenced as early as the fifteenth century. Furthermore, Rebecca Jennings’ A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500, provides a valuable discussion of evidence of female homoeroticism throughout ancient, medieval and early modern history in medical texts, literature, visual art and travel journals. In fact, female sexual gratification during the fourteenth - seventeenth centuries was thought to be fundamental to conception and to curing symptoms of female hysteria; if a husband was thought to be incapable of administering an orgasm, it was expected that a midwife would do so. Thus, female ‘administered’ sexual gratification was well established.
A lack of awareness may be attributable to a lack of legal jurisdiction regarding female homoeroticism in comparison to strict laws and punishments for male homoeroticism throughout the centuries. Phallic-free sex couldn’t really be comprehended in strictly patriarchal societies, so even when and where there were laws regarding ‘lesbianism’, they were based on the use of ‘tools’ which weren’t a real penis in intercourse with women. For example, women in the fifteenth and sixteenth century in the Southern Netherlands faced strict prosecution for the crime of sodomy. These facts did little to disprove dominant historiography concerning female homoeroticism (or rather lack thereof) in historical study until the publication of Anne Lister’s explicit sexual exploits in the 1980s. Emma Donoghue has described these texts as the 'Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history’ for their incomparable impact in proving female homoeroticism prior to the twentieth century.
Since the rediscovery and decoding of her diaries, Anne Lister has become a sapphic icon comparable to Sappho herself. Her apparent singularity in her efforts to live freely in matrimony with another woman has elicited a wealth of historical and cultural media attention. Most recently, she has dominated BBC ratings in the series ‘Gentleman Jack’, named for Lister’s malicious nickname among Halifax residents for the way she appeared ‘like a man’ according to her dress and engagement in business. The show is well worth a watch, and has been developed according to the 26 volumes that Lister wrote, specifically focussing on the last eight years of her life, when she decided to settle down and ‘marry’. There are inaccuracies, and several liberties taken with costume (she didn’t wear a tall hat, for example), and her height, but the changes are not particularly important to the narrative of the show, nor how we remember her. (This isn’t a historical-fiction article, so no more comments about the accuracy of dress, I promise.)
The first series depicts Lister's determined mission to court
and marry the much younger and often bewildered local heiress, Ann Walker. The final episode of the first series depicts the pair ‘marrying’ at the Holy Trinity Church in York on Easter Sunday, 1834. Series two follows their ‘marriage’ and Lister pushing Walker into making Lister a large beneficiary of her estate, something Lister had previously done for the 'love of her life'
Mariana Lawton (née Belcombe). These events, depicted in remarkable accuracy support a popular belief that Lister was the first modern lesbian, and her ‘marriage’ to Walker unique. However, we know for a fact that female homoeroticism was not invented by this dashing sapphic in the eighteenth century, and if you cast your eye slightly broader, even the idea of marriage to another woman was not her own. (Shockingly, lesbians have always been trying to move in with each other and live their lives together.)
Lister has had an undeniable impact on Sapphic history, yet her popular legacy as ‘Modern History’s first Lesbian’ is ridiculously unfair. For starters, the term lesbian, although used throughout this article, isn’t really one that we can use as the term was not popularly known or used, certainly not by the women we are discussing. Secondly, Anne Lister was not the only woman to fancy other women, otherwise she wouldn’t have found anyone to shag. And finally, if Anne Lister had to give an opinion on the subject, she would likely argue that she was 'Modern History’s First Lesbian', after the Ladies of Llangollen.
Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby
In July 1822, Anne Lister, along with her aunt, the elder Anne Lister, embarked on a long-awaited tour of North Wales, the shining moment of which was a stay in the Vale of Llangollen and two visits to a Tudor Style Cottage named Plas-Newydd. Meaning New-House’, Plas-Newydd was the home to the Anglo-Irish gentlewomen Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby. This pair of women were significant because they had done something completely out of the ordinary for eighteenth-century women, they had run away, and set up their own home, completely cutting ties with their families. Now that’s a simplified summary of events, so let’s go into more detail.
Ponsonby and Butler met in around 1776, Butler was already a spinster (she was in her 30s, scandalous!), and Ponsonby, an eighteen-year-old. They would meet for tutoring, long walks and deep conversations, when Butler travelled, they sent rambling letters, telling how much they missed the other. It became clear quite quickly, that the pair were completely obsessed with each other. (Typical.) In April 1778, discovering that Ponsonby’s family were discussing her marriage, they decided to sneak out from their respective homes in Kilkenny and escape to Wales, where Butler had found a discrete cottage for their elopement. The first escape effort failed, and they were both imprisoned in their homes, until Butler, learning that she was to be packed off to a convent, escaped, and managed to get into Ponsonby’s chambers, where she hid for several days whilst the families debated what to do with their unruly girls. Eventually, on the 6th May, they were allowed to leave, with Ponsonby’s trusted maid, on the premise that they would not take any income from their families, nor return to Kilkenny. (Such a hardship…)
So, Butler and Ponsonby ran off to Wales, eloping in ‘exquisite retirement’. They found a home in Llangollen and spent their days engaging in literary scholarship and lengthy walks around the Welsh hills, and their evenings in the same bed. They became a site of fascination for society, their ‘romantic friendship’ as it was known, thought of as an exquisite form of platonic love. Even Queen Charlotte (yes that one) adored them, and the Ladies engaged with her by sending a plan of their home and gardens. They welcomed a constant stream of visitors there to view the extensive literary collection, and the spectacle of the ladies themselves. These visitors included Anna Seward, who we will discuss in a moment, William Wordsworth, and even Lord Byron.
Lister’s intrigue with these ‘Ladies of Llangollen’ as they were nicknamed, was two-fold; firstly, regarding their extensive literary scholarship, and secondly, the exact intimate nature of their relationship. During her visit on the 23rd July 1822, Lister attempted to ask Ponsonby about the true nature of their relationship, asking if they were ‘classical’, meaning homoerotic, which Ponsonby denied. Although she was unable to discern the true extent of the intimacy shared between Butler and Ponsonby, the impact on the then 31-year-old Lister was made. Later that day Lister writes, ‘I cannot help but thinking that surely it [their relationship] was not platonic’. (Very astute, Anne.)
Romantic Friendship or homo-eroticism?
Whilst historical study on the Ladies of Llangollen has not been lacking in quantity, in terms of ‘queer’ studies it has certainly been lacking in quality. The story of the pair’s attempted secret flight and eventual successful elopement, against the best efforts of their families, would, had either been male have been an undeniably sexually charged tale of forbidden lovers. However, dominant historiography continues to consider Butler and Ponsonby’s relationship as the idyllic platonic ‘Romantic Friendship’ of the long eighteenth century: a fairly common intimate relationship between women which surpassed any other friendship, but was not sexual. This is despite substantial evidence which supports an argument that their elopement was every bit the twenty-first century cottage-core fantasy it appears. As well as the basic fact that other romantic friendships would last for a few years at the most, and end with one or both women involved marrying men and moving on.
Historians have struggled to conceptualise this relationship in light of the facts, for example, the 1936 narrative biography Chase of the Wild Goose by lesbian, doctor, and author, Mary Gordon presents the Ladies as proto-feminist and proto-lesbian. In her fantastical epilogue she alludes to the queer connotations of their partnership and thanks them for making ‘the way straight for the time that we inherited…’. However, she does not entertain a possibility of a sexual relationship. Similarly, Elizabeth Mavor, writing in 1971 strives to decry claims of a sexual relationship, or ‘Freud-ism’, concluding that whilst the Ladies of Llangollen are an example of an extraordinarily close ‘Romantic Friendship’ the ambiguity of their intimacy stems from their longevity, and nothing more.
Now we know that these arguments are fundamentally flawed, female homoeroticism was an established fact, Gordon and Mavor’s obsessive attempts to avoid any implication of a sexual relationship, or ‘Freud-ism’ in their portrayals of the Ladies of Llangollen has resulted in texts which ignore glaring and simple facts. Such as their dramatic elopement; fifty years of cohabitation; bed sharing; exclusive use of the phrase ‘My Beloved’; never spending a night apart; and their uninhibited and unwavering dedication to each other from the moment of their meeting. (It's all very straight, isn't it?)
If this were truly an innocent Romantic Friendship, why was their elopement scandalous?
Lady Betty Fownes, Ponsonby's guardian, wrote of her happiness on hearing of Butler's impending confinement, 'I wish she had been safe in one [a convent] long ago; she would have made us [all] happy. Many an unhappy hour she has cost me, and, I am convinced, years to Sally [Sarah]'. Despite Mavor and Gordon’s wilful ignorance, the retirement to Wales was clearly understood by all parties to not be a temporary excursion. The dedication shown by these women was indicative even to their earliest contemporaries of something greater than a ‘Romantic Friendship’. Furthermore, considering primary texts such as the Hamwood Papers (Butler’s diaries and their correspondence) it is clear that Butler and Ponsonby thought of themselves as good as married. In convincing Fownes that she could be trusted with her guard, Butler promised that she would care for her ‘for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health’. Whilst Ponsonby, in response to Mrs Lucy Goddard’s fearful warning that Butler was a woman who ‘does not understand virtue…’ adding, ‘…she might make love to you,” replied laughing, ‘I hope that she will love me… she does so beautifully.’ Regardless of if these comments were meant in sincerity or jest, it is clear that they were aware of, and unafraid of the connotations their intimate relationship encouraged. In a discussion of their self-awareness it is also worth noting that the Ladies of Llangollen had a string of dogs named Sappho. As literary scholars this may be ignored as simple poetic favour, fragments of Sappho’s poetry which may have been considered homoerotic were typically censored throughout the eighteenth century. However, as stated, Sappho was already synonymous with female homoeroticism, Emma Donoghue and Susan Lanser have established that any exclusion of these excerpts indicate an inherent, and fearful understanding of deviance, but this censorship wasn’t complete, and the texts could be accessed. It would be ignorant to argue that the Ladies of Llangollen, whose literary scholarship was almost unparalleled, were unaware of the implication of this name.
Why is it so difficult to accept historic sapphism?
Jennings explains that the fundamental obstacle to studies of ambiguous sapphic relationships is ‘essentialism’ (the idea that same-sex relationships have always existed and need to be rescued) and ‘constructionism’ (that sexual practises and identities are defined by wider culture and thus, how we define them tells us more about ourselves than of the relationships in question). It is perhaps because of this difficulty, and because of what Jennings describes as an obsession with defining ‘lesbianism’ through sex, that the Ladies of Llangollen are overlooked as an example of female same-sex love and homoeroticism. To put it simply, it seems to suit conservatism to consider Anne Lister entirely singular in her vulgarity.
Fiona Brideoake provides the most effective rebuttal of reductive studies, starting with a criticism of Faderman’s conclusion that ‘lesbianism’ is a gendered commitment to another woman. Brideoake argues that these relationships are in fact, indicative of a multifaceted identity which should be considered equal to heterosexuality. However, the issues surrounding comprehending these relationships remain, thus, the terminology used to discuss them must be carefully chosen. Brideoake favours the umbrella term ‘queer’ meaning alternative to heteronormativity, Sarah Bentley defines their relationship, or rather our understanding of ‘Romantic Friendships’ to be ‘queer platonic’. However, is the accuracy of their intimacy the most significant factor of their relationship? As Elin Salt, the playwright of ‘Celebrated Virgins’ a 2022 play about the Ladies of Llangollen, states ‘if this was a man and a woman... We'd just accept they were two people who loved each other.” It is not the complexities of their relationship which are important, it is their impact as perceived Sapphists which needs to be considered.
An anti- ‘lesbian’ argument could be supported by Hester Thrale Piozzi’s good friendship with Butler and Ponsonby. Piozzi is damning of perceived sapphism. For example, in her in 1789 denunciation of Marie Antoinette; Piozi also accused Anne Seymour Damer, an artist who was a rumoured sapphist of ‘liking her own sex in a criminal way...’. Piozzi would have been aware of the suggestions made concerning the intimacy of Butler and Ponsonby’s relationship thanks to a number of news publications disparaging the Ladies and their relationship, such as an article titled ‘Extraordinary Female Affection’ for a 1790 issue of the St James’ Chronicle. It is perhaps due to the inaccuracies of such articles that Piozzi does not disparage Butler and Ponsonby as she does other women who appear unsuitably single, describing them instead as ‘enchantresses’. However, as established ‘lesbians’ Anne Lister and Anna Seward both considered the Ladies of Llangollen as their emotional and erotic ‘kin’ it is in a study of these latter women that their position as ‘Modern History’s First Lesbians’ can be understood.
Understanding sapphism through tragedy
Queer history is often quite tragic, between forced heterosexuality, death and separation, you're hard pressed to find a truly happy queer relationship. Even Sarah and Eleanor's de facto marriage necessitated an almost permanent split from their families and homes. Queer individuals and relationships are recognisable through tragedy, a good example of this is Anna Seward, queer, a romantic poet and friend to the Ladies of Llangollen. Seward's writing and letters support an argument of lesbianism; she wrote to Mrs M. Powys in 1796 describing the Ladies of Llangollen as a modern Rosalind and Celia, the cross-dressing ‘lesbians’ of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. More significant however, is the suggestion that through their
relationship, Seward was able to mourn the loss of her own love, living somewhat vicariously through her friends. The majority of Seward’s biographical studies pay little attention to the cause of her lifelong depression, perhaps to avoid a discussion of the poet’s sexuality. Literary studies of her work have however highlighted the cause of her heartbreak as the loss of Honora Sneyd, first to marriage and later to death, primary to that of the other numerous griefs Seward suffered, including the death of her sister and father, to both of whom she was remarkably
close. Sneyd, who Seward refers to as the ‘sun of my youthful horizon’, ‘my lost Honora’ and ‘my constant companion’ is considered to be an equal or greater inspiration to Seward’s Ossianic literature than the death of her other famous lover Major Andre. She describes her grief for her lost lovers simultaneously, writing [the memory of them is] ‘rising, like an exhalation, in my memory’. In her 2015 publication, Joellen DuLucia situates Seward’s grief and her sapphism in the context of her epic, Llangollen Vale, which personifies Butler and Ponsonby. This, along with William Wordsworth’s later sonnet were significant contributors to the Ladies’ popular celebrity, and the language used by both is thought to have protected the
Ladies of Llangollen from scandal regarding the nature of their relationship. However, if read through a queer lens, Seward’s epic narrative in particular, can be read as an ode not only to ‘Eleanora and Zara’, but through the lack of tragedy, a melancholic ode to the tragic Honora Sneyd. Particularly enlightening is the line which hopes that they [Butler and Ponsonby] will ‘perish together beneath “one kind icebolt,” a peace she and Sneyd could never share.
‘Modern History’s First Lesbian’ herself, Anne Lister, first read about the Ladies of Llangollen in an 1810 article in the fashionable magazine La Belle Assemblee. However, Lister’s sapphism could not be attributed to the reading of an article. As her diaries indicate, Lister had been considered ‘odd’ throughout her childhood, too masculine, too daring and too vulgar. Her first relationship began when Lister was 15, and confined to the attic of her boarding school in fears that she would negatively influence the other girls. Her roommate, Eliza Raine, an Anglo-Indian girl who was also considered too non-conformist to share the usual dormitories, became her first love from 1806 until 1814. Moreover, Lister’s relationship with Mariana Lawton began in 1812, however, it is only once Mariana visits Llangollen in 1817 and writes of Butler and Ponsonby’s unparalleled devotion that the pair began to seriously envisage a future together, despite Lawton’s marriage and the unfortunate eventuality that her husband did not die. Initially pushed by Lawton, from the moment of her own visit in 1822, Lister too was entirely convinced; she wrote days after her visit ‘I should not like to live in Wales – but if it must be so, and I could choose the spot, it should be Plas-Newydd at Llangollen, which is already endeared even to me by the association of ideas.’ (Very platonic!)
Plas-Newydd and Llangollen Vale became, during the lifetimes of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby and continues to be to this day, a destination of pilgrimage for LGBTQIA+ individuals. This is indicative of their legacy as identifiable non-conformists to a cis and heteronormative society with which countless cannot identify. In considering the impact of these women on Anne Lister and Anna Seward it is clear that in a discussion of the ‘Modern History’s First Lesbians’ the Ladies of Llangollen do precede Anne Lister, regardless of the sexual intensity of their relationship.
Further reading:
‘The Hamwood Manuscripts’, papers of Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, comprising diaries and correspondence, together with related papers, (1774-1831) The National Library of Wales, < https://archives.library.wales/index.php/hamwood-manuscripts >
Norton, Rictor (Ed.), "Extraordinary Female Affection, 1790", Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook, (22 April 2005, updated 15 June 2005) http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1790extr.html
Seward, Anna, ‘Llangollen Vale, inscribed to the Right Honourable Lady Eleanor Butler, and Miss Ponsonby’, in Llangollen Vale, with Other Poems, (London: 1796), Published online at Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive, < https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/bse96-w0010.shtml>
Thrale, Hester Lynch, Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs Piozzi), 1776-1809, Ed. Katherine C. Balderston, Vol.2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942)
The Diaries of Anne Lister
Lister, Anne, Whitbread, Helena (ed.), I know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, (New York and London, 1988)
Lister, Anne, Whitbread, Helena (ed.), No Priest but Love: The Journals of Anne Lister from 1824-1826, (New York: New York University Press, 1992)
Lister, Anne, Whitbread, Helena (ed.), The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister, (London: Virago Press, 2010)
‘Courageous and Audacious Ladies of Llangollen’, Duke University Libraries, (06/03/2018), < https://blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/2018/03/06/courageous-audacious-ladies-llangollen/>
‘Female Sodomy’, Not Just the Tudors, (2022), https://open.spotify.com/episode/1UVn5aESC9aIf2ShXyEKKZ?si=OD_AV7_AR8ano9Qr7G3WcA
Baigent, Elizabeth, ‘Lister, Anne’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/updated 2019), < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37678>
Bentley, Sarah, ‘The Ladies of Llangollen’, Wellcome Collection, (13/03/2018), <https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WqewRSUAAB8sVaKN>
Bowerbank, Sylvia, ‘Seward, Anna (called the Swan of Lichfield), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004). < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25135>
Brideoake, Fiona, ‘” Extraordinary Female Affection”: The Ladies of Llangollen and the Endurance of Queer Community’, Romanticism on the Net, Number 36-27, (November 2004, February 2005), <https://doi.org/10.7202/011141ar>
Bryan, Nicola, ‘Gentleman Jack: The Ladies of Llangollen who intrigued Anne Lister’, BBC News, (02/04/2022), <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60917657>
Castle, Terry, The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)
Clark, Anna, ‘Secrets and Lies: Anne Lister’s Love for Women and the Natural Self’, in Clark, Anna, Alternative Histories of the Self: A Cultural History of Sexuality and Secrets, 1762-1917, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), pp.5-77, <: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3840441 >
Colwill, Elizabeth, ‘Pass as a Woman, Act like a Man: Marie-Antoinette as Tribade in the Pornography of the French Revolution’, in Merrick, Jeffrey, and Ragan, Bryant T., (eds.) Homosexuality in Modern France, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
Coyle, Eugene, ‘The Irish Ladies of Llangollen: ‘The two most celebrated virgins in Europe’’, History Ireland, Vol.23, No.6 (Nov/Dec 2015), pp.18-20, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/43598746>
Crampton, Caroline, ‘The lesbian Dead Sea Scrolls: Anne Lister’s diaries’, The New Statesman, (05/12/2013), < https://www.newstatesman.com/uncategorized/2013/12/lesbian-dead-sea-scrolls>
DeLucia, JoEllen, ‘Queering Progress: Anna Seward and Llangollen Vale’, in DeLucia, JoEllen, A Feminine Enlightenment: British Women Writers and the Philosophy of Progress, 1759-1820, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp.87-116, < DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748695942.003.0003>
Euler, Catherine A., Moving Between Worlds: Gender, Class, Politics, Sexuality and Women’s Networks in the Diaries of Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax, Yorkshire, 1830-1840, (D. Phil: University of York, May 1995), <https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2471/1/DX190733.pdf >
Faderman, Lillian, Surpassing the Love of Men, (London: The Women’s Press LTD., 1985)
Figes, Lydia, ‘Lesbian love and coded diaries: the remarkable story of Anne Lister’, Art UK, (10/05/2019), <https://artuk.org/discover/stories/lesbian-love-and-coded-diaries-the-remarkable-story-of-anne-lister>
Gordon, Mary, The Llangollen Ladies, originally titled Chase of the Wild Goose (North Wales: John Jones, 1936, this ed. 1999)
Grant, Allison, ‘The Dangers of Playing House: Celia’s Subversive Role in As You Like It’, Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference, Vol.4, Article 5, (2011), <: http://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/spovsc/vol4/iss2011/5>
Griffiths, Hannah, ‘The Ladies of Llangollen’, The National Archives Blog, (08/02/2022), <https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/the-ladies-of-llangollen/>
Hallett, Judith P., ‘Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality’, Signs, Vol.4, No.3, (Spring 1979), pp.447-464, < https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173393 >
Hunt, Margaret R., ‘The Sapphic Strain: English Lesbians in the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Bennett, Judith M., and Froide, Amy M., (eds.) Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp.270-296
Iglikowski-Broad, Vicky, ‘Gentleman Jack: Anne Lister - the first modern lesbian?’ the National Archives Blog, (09/07/2022), <https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/gentleman-jack-anne-lister-the-first-modern-lesbian/>
Jennings, Rebecca, A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500, (Oxford, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007)
Katz, Brigit, ‘The 19th-century Lesbian Landowner who set out to find a wife’, Smithsonian Magazine, (19/04/2019), < https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/19th-century-lesbian-landowner-who-set-out-find-wife-180971995/>
Mavor, Elizabeth, ‘Butler, Lady (Charlotte) Eleanor’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/2006), < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4182>
Mavor, Elizabeth, The Ladies of Llangollen: A Study in Romantic Friendship, (London: Penguin Books, 1971)
Reynolds, Nicole, ‘Cottage Industry: The Ladies of Llangollen and the Symbolic Capital of the Cottage Ornee’, The Eighteenth Century, Vol.51, No.1/2, (Spring/Summer 2010), pp.211-227, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/41468095>
Saunders, Amy, ‘The Afterlife of Christina of Sweden: Gender and Sexuality in Heritage and Fiction’, Royal Studies Journal, Issue 6, (2019), pp.204-221, < http://doi.org/10.21039/rsj.199>
Valladares, Susan, ‘” An introduction to the Literary Person[s]” of Anne Lister and the Ladies of Llangollen’, Literature Compass, Issue 10, (2013), pp.353-368 <https://dro.dur.ac.uk/33541/>
Willis, Matthew, ‘Who were the Ladies of Llangollen?’, JSTOR Daily, (10/04/2022), <https://daily.jstor.org/who-were-the-ladies-of-llangollen/>