Mrs Delany
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
A Life
Clarissa Campbell Orr
View Inside
Format: HC - Paper over BoardPrice: $38.00
“Biographer Clarissa Campbell Orr immerses you in the minutiae of Mary’s life” —Constance Craig-Smith, Daily Mail
Mary Granville Delany (1700-1788), perhaps best known simply as Mrs Delany, is best remembered for her captivating paper collages of flowers, but her artistic flourishing came late in life. This nuanced, deeply researched biography pulls back the lens to place Delany’s art in the broader context of her family life, relationships with royalty, and her endeavor to live as an independent woman.
Clarissa Campbell Orr, a noted authority on the eighteenth century court, charts Mary Delany’s development from a young woman at the heart of elite circles to beloved godmother and celebrated collagist. Orr traces the varied connections Mary Delany fostered throughout her life and which influenced her intellectual and artistic development: she was friends with prominent figures such as Methodist leader, John Wesley, composer G. F. Handel, the writer Jonathan Swift, and England’s leading patron of science, Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland.
Mrs Delany reveals its subject to be far more than a widow befriended by George III and Queen Charlotte; she is, instead, restored to her proper place in the era’s aristocratic society –and as a ground-breaking artist.
She was a Visiting Research Fellow at St Mary's University Twickenham from 2016 to 2018 after a long career at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.
“This sensitively-written book immerses the reader in the world of a cultivated and artistic eighteenth-century gentlewoman. Through a fully-researched and fascinating exploration of the familial correspondence of Mary Delany, Orr throws new and original light on the attitudes of the eighteenth-century elite to marriage, family life and the education and status of women.”—Jane Rendall, author of The Origins of Modern Feminism
“How was it that Mary Delany so skillfully combined a high-profile social circle, copious letter-writing and attendance at the royal court with gardening, botanical enquiry and prolific and innovative artistic endeavour? This fascinating life is both timely and revelatory.”—James Raven, What is the History of the Book?
Publication Date: October 21, 2019
50 color illus.
