Hester Thrale
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Italy is only a fine well - known academy figure, from which we all sit down to make drawings, according as the light falls, and our own seat affords opportunity."-- Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany (1789) by Hester Thrale |
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Hester Thrale, later Piozzi (1741 – 1821) was a British writer and patron of the arts. Her diaries and correspondence are an important source of information about Samuel Johnson and eighteenth-century life.
After Johnson's death, she published Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) and her letters (1788). Together with her diaries which were known as Thraliana, and were not published until 1949, these sources help to fill out the often biased picture of Johnson presented in Boswell's Life. Johnson often stayed with the Thrale household and had his own room, above the library at Streatham in which he worked. Hester's papers provide more insight into his composition process.
She is also the author of Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey Through France, Italy and Germany (1789).
