Lady Charlotte Guest

Lady Charlotte Guest
Portrait of Lady Charlotte Guest
Born
Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie

19 May 1812
Died15 January 1895 (age 82)
Occupation(s)Translator, businesswoman
Spouses
(m. 1833⁠–⁠1852)
(m. 1855⁠–⁠1884)
ChildrenCharlotte Maria Guest
Ivor Bertie Guest
Katharine Gwladys Guest
Thomas Merthyr Guest
Montague Guest
Augustus Frederick Guest
Arthur Edward Guest
Mary Enid Evelyn Guest
Constance Rhiannon Guest
Blanche Guest
Parent(s)Albemarle Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsey
Charlotte Susannah Elizabeth Layard

Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest (née Bertie; 19 May 1812 – 15 January 1895), later Lady Charlotte Schreiber, was an English aristocrat who is best known as the first publisher in modern print format of the Mabinogion, the earliest prose literature of Britain. Guest established the Mabinogion as a source literary text of Europe, claiming this recognition among literati in the context of contemporary passions for the chivalric romance of King Arthur and the Gothic movement. The name Guest used for the book was derived from a mediaeval copyist's error, already established in the 18th century by William Owen Pughe and the London Welsh societies.

As an accomplished linguist and the wife of a foremost Welsh[citation needed] ironmaster John Josiah Guest, she became a leading figure in the study of literature and the wider Welsh Renaissance of the 19th century. With her second husband, Charles Schreiber, she became a well known Victorian collector of porcelain; their collection is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum. She also created major collections of fans, games, and playing cards, which she gave to the British Museum.[1] She was noted as an international industrialist, pioneering liberal educator, philanthropist and elite society hostess.[2]

  1. ^ Lady Charlotte Schreiber (Biographical details), British Museum. Accessed 8 May 2019
  2. ^ David Jones, "Lady Charlotte Guest: Victorian Businesswoman" History Today (1973) 23#1 pp 38-45.

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