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Author: Piozzi, Hester Lynch

Biography:

PIOZZI, Hester Lynch, formerly THRALE, formerly SALUSBURY (1741-1821: ODNB)

The only child of Sir John Salusbury (1707-62) and his wife Hester Maria Cotton (1707-73), she was born at Bodfel Hall near Pwllheli, Caernarvonshire, Wales, on 16 Jan. 1741. The family was well connected but impoverished and financially dependent on two of her uncles. She was raised as an heiress with unusual attention to her private education in philosophy, rhetoric, Latin, French, and Italian; she contributed verse and prose translations to periodicals in her teens. The prospect of an inherited fortune fell through, however, and after the death of her father who had opposed the socially disadvantageous match, she reluctantly married Henry Thrale (1728-81), a wealthy London brewer, on 11 Oct. 1763. Her mother became part of the Thrale household. Of twelve children, only four daughters survived to maturity; the son and heir died, aged nine, in 1776. The Thrales’ lives were transformed when Thrale befriended Samuel (“Doctor”) Johnson (q.v.) in 1765: he and members of his circle became regular guests at the Thrales’ table and Johnson for extended periods lived and travelled with them. Johnson encouraged Mrs. Thrale’s writing and welcomed her assistance with his own. But the death of Henry Thrale on 4 Apr. 1781 abruptly broke the connection. Hester Thrale sold the brewery and in July 1784 married for a second time. Her husband was an Italian Roman Catholic, Gabriel Piozzi (1740-89), who had been her daughters’ music master. Almost everyone disapproved, but the Piozzis were happy together. To a period of travel on the Continent belong her contributions to the Florence Miscellany and her Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786), which was followed by a (heavily redacted) collection of their correspondence (1788), a travel journal (1789), British Synonymy (1794), and Retrospection (1801). In 1795 the couple moved to their villa in Wales, Brynbella, where Piozzi died on 26 Mar. 1809. In 1814 his widow made over the Welsh estates to their adopted nephew John Salusbury Piozzi as a wedding present and retired to Bath, Somerset, where she continued to write, to socialize, and to cultivate new friendships. As the consequence of a fall, she died at another spa town, Clifton, on 2 May 1821. She was buried on 16 May beside Piozzi in a vault at Corpus Christi Church, Tremerchion, Wales. (ODNB 24 Oct. 2023; Orlando 24 Oct. 2023) 

 

Other Names:

  • Mrs. Piozzi
 

Books written (1):

Florence: G. Cam, [1785]