Lady Charlotte Guest : An Extraordinary Life

Lady Charlotte (1812-95) was one of the most outstanding and successful women of the nineteenth century. Daughter of the Ninth Earl of Lindsey, she married the ironmaster Josiah John Guest when she was twenty-one and moved from Lincolnshire to industrial South Wales. Here she immersed herself in all aspects of Welsh language and culture, and is perhaps best remembered for her pioneering translation of the medieval tales The Mabinogion. But she also involved herself in politics, was a successful businesswoman, an educational reformer who established much-praised schools and a society hostess. During this same period she gave birth to ten children in thirteen years.

Living at a time when self-effacement, duty and sacrifice were prescribed for women, Lady Charlotte revelled instead in the business of the Dowlais Ironworks, the largest in the world. As her husband''s health deteriorated she increasingly assumed control, and when Sir John died she ran the works herself. She proved a formidable employer engaging with both ironworkers and ironmasters during a bitter strike.

On marrying her eldest son''s tutor, the considerably younger Charles Schreiber, she left Wales and travelled in Europe collecting eighteenth-century fans and ceramics. The Schreiber Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum is another of her legacies.

Through this extraordinary woman''s life, the authors explore the impact of industrialisation on British society, Wales''s literary heritage and the importance of gender in Victorian society. The diaries Lady Charlotte kept for seventy years are a wonderfully rich source illuminating not only the thoughts and emotions of an influential nineteenth-century woman but also the day-to-day concerns and struggles of those with ambition and vision.