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Queen of the Wits: A Life of Laetitia Pilkington

Too clever for her own good

Norma Clarke
Faber, 350pp, £20,

Claire Tomalin

Wednesday, 20th February 2008

Claire Tomalin reviews Norma Clarke's biography of Laetitia Pilkinton

Ireland gave her a sort of welcome, and Jack was a good son to her. Lord Kingsborough, a foolish peer, was for a while a generous patron; he was the uncle of the Kingsborough who employed Mary Wollstonecraft as a governess 40 years later — the family’s help to these two women puts some lustre on their otherwise dull name. But even Lord K did not want her to dedicate a volume of her memoirs to him, and when he heard there was talk of her publishing his letters he broke with her. Everyone read the two volumes of her memoirs published in her lifetime, but she died in poverty aged 38, with only Jack at her side.

Her poetry is elegant and readable, but her memoirs shine with energy and wit, and gleaming impressions of character and place, happiness, humiliation and destitution. Woolf described her as a cross between Moll Flanders and Thackeray’s daughter Anne Ritchie, which comes quite close. Norma Clarke has given us a full portrait, unsentimental, just and authoritative. It has long been needed, and she has earned our thanks.