SOURCE: "Original Memorials of Mrs. Piozzi," in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VII, May, 1861, pp. 614-15.

In the following excerpt, the anonymous critic comments on Piozzi's character, focusing in particular on her "animated manner" and her "charm" as the mistress of Streatham Park.

Patricia Meyer Spacks Writes on Piozzi's Character:

The conventional view of Hester Piozzi as vain, self-obsessed, and negligible is altogether inadequate. Although she never came close to being the great writer she longed to be, her interest for twentieth-century readers depends not merely on her acquaintanceship with the great or her ability to tell interesting anecdotes. Her very lack of literary skill make her writing self-revealing; and what it reveals is the nature of the feminine dilemma for an eighteenth-century woman not gifted enough to escape the stereotypes of her sex and class.

Patricia Meyer Spacks, in Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol. XVIII, July, 1970, p. 242.

Ninety years...