SOURCE: "Hester," in Prose and Poetry, Jonathan Cape, 1947, pp. 198-205.

In the following excerpt, Meynell remarks on Piozzi's marriages, social life, and literary style, finding that she had "all the interest belonging of right to a woman altogether of her time. "

Too much contemporary literature tampered with the history of Mrs. Thrale. She was the victim of end-of-the-century styles. It was not only her Fanny Burney that made her the subject of a first manner, a second manner, and a third manner. She was the object of Dr. Johnson, in letters that were to be preserved; but she was also his topic, in talk that would have been better forgotten. It was reported to her by the hostile Boswell, when it seemed more or less to belie the letters of the past. And all the world knows by heart how Mrs. Thrale's story became Macaulay's opportunity.

Fanny Burney's...