DELANY, Mrs. GRANVILLE Mary. The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany: with interesting reminiscences of King George The Third and Queen Charlotte. Edited by the Right Honourable Lady Llanover. Illustrated with fine portraits. First and second series.

THE WOMAN OF FASHION OF ALL AGES

Six volumes. London, Bentley, 1861/62. Octavo. Bound by Hatchards of Piccadilly in slightly later half crushed brown morocco on linen boards. Spines divided into six panels by five thick raised bands, titles and volume numbers in gilt direct; splash-marbled endpapers; maroon and gold endbands; brown silk markers. Some occasional light foxing. Top edges gilt. A fine and very attractive set. Very scarce.
Mary Delany (née Granville, earlier Mrs. Pendarves), one of the most remarkable personalities of the eighteenth century, was born in Wiltshire in 1700, and brought up at Longleat House. At eighteen, she was unwillingly married to an elderly Cornish squire, and on his death in 1724 she went to live with the Stanleys, Earls of Derby. In 1731-3 she made a journey to Ireland and began the correspondence with her sister Anne Dewes. She returned to Ireland following her marriage to Rev. Patrick Delany (biographer of Swift) in 1743 and settled at his home, Delville in Glasnevin. These amusing and perceptive letters provide a lively and detailed insight into the lifestyle of the ascendancy classes and the architectural grandeur of many country houses. She also corresponded with Swift, who wrote of his growing isolation. Following her husband’s death in 1768 she sold up and returned to London and was memorialized by Fanny Burney and Edmund Burke, who stated that Mary was: “the highest bred woman in the world, and the woman of fashion of all ages”. She died in 1788. Lady Llanover who edited the correspondence was a descendant of Mrs. Delany’s sister, Anne Dewes.
Volume I, begins with an unfinished autobiography and continues with correspondence from 1717 to 1837. Volume II, covers the period 1737 to 1750, during which she married the Irish clergyman Patrick Delany. Volume III, contains letters from 1751 to 1761, when Delany and her husband lived mostly in Ireland. Volume IV, covers a difficult period in her life, 1761-74, during which she was again widowed. Volume V, beginning 1774 and ending in 1780, covers the period of her work on botanical illustrations. Volume VI, covers the final years of Delany’s life, and includes a copy of her will.
“Six volumes of autobiography show Mrs. Delany to have been an amiable and virtuous woman, universally respectable, and in her later years capable of telling many interesting anecdotes of Swift, Pope, and others to a later generation. The letters are chiefly interesting as specimens of the commonplace gossip of good society in the eighteenth century.”- DNB.

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