Hester Thrale (1741-1821) was a British author, and patron of the arts. Her diaries and correspondence are an important source of information about 18th century life. They were published in 1949 and were known under the title of Thraliana. She was a member of the Salusbury Family, one of the most illustrious Welsh land-owning dynasties of the Georgian era. She narrated her life experiences in her writings trying to reconcile her public image as a brilliant salonniere and her private sorrows caused by her husband’s infidelity. She had married him to save her family from bankruptcy.

Thrale started to hosted the intellectual middle class of London in their country home, including actors, dramatists, writers, musicians, and thinkers. She was a brilliant hostess who enacted her intellectual and professional autonomy with a close eye on social respectability. “The Streatham Circle”, named after the Thrales’ lavish estate rivaled London’s salons by devising their own social rules. They would read poems and letters aloud, compose verses and sharing books while leaving hand written notes of their critique in the margins. In the Streatham library where the meetings were held, the walls were adorned with commissioned portraits of each of the groups members painted by Joshua Reynolds.

Guests were classified humorously into different categories, such as Religion, Morality and Scholarship, General Knowledge, Person and Voice, Manner, Wit, Humour, and Good Humor. The women specifically held classifications such as Worth of Heart, Conversation Powers, Person Mien and Manner, Good humour, Useful Knowledge, Ornamental Knowledge (Singing, Dancing, Painting). The circle also practiced curious forms of conversation, a sort of exclusive code circulating among themselves, which they also used in their letters. Overall, despite the underlying witty humor, the Streatham circle was intimate, colloquial, and maintained a congenial atmosphere.

For Frances Burney’s first novel, Evelina, Thrale took the role of a bluestocking, a promoter of a talented female writer as a professional author, independent of the individual patronage and publication by subscription. Thrale on her own wrote Retrospection: or a review of the most striking and important events, characters, situations, and their consequences which the last eighteen hundred years have presented to the view of mankind. The book was not well received at its time but is seen today as part of feminist history. It demonstrates how historical changes affected women and anticipated Marx’s theory in understanding social relationships through traded objects.


SOURCES
http://www.womenwriters.nl/index.php/Hester_Lynch_Thrale_Piozzi.
http://www.womenwriters.nl/index.php/Hester_Lynch_Thrale_Piozzi
https://somethingrhymed.com/2015/07/01/frances-burney-and-hester-thrale/
https://books.google.com/books?id=wEIaBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=hester+thrale+salon&source=bl&ots=R9zuwezfJC&sig=zphuohOJU_EG_6J6XKWlGaEQUpM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjcmrTo5MHYAhWFQ98KHZFxAa04ChDoAQgvMAI#v=onepage&q=salon&f=false
Wikipedia