author
Penelope Pennington
1757–1827
A lively letter-writer from late Georgian Britain, she is remembered today through her warm, intelligent correspondence with Hester Lynch Piozzi and other literary friends. Her surviving letters offer a vivid glimpse of sociable, bookish life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
1 Audiobook
The Intimate Letters of Hester Piozzi and Penelope Pennington, 1788-1821
by Hester Lynch Piozzi, Penelope Pennington
About the author
Penelope Sophia Weston Pennington (1757–1827) was an English correspondent and literary friend whose name is best known from The Intimate Letters of Hester Piozzi and Penelope Pennington, 1788–1821. She moved in cultivated circles and was connected with figures such as Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, Anna Seward, and Mary Hays.
Sources consulted during this search describe her as née Weston and place her in London before her marriage in 1792 to William Pennington, an American who became Master of Ceremonies at the Bristol Hotwells. Later records connect her with Hot Wells and Dowry Square in Bristol, where she appears in surviving letters and archival collections.
What makes her interesting now is not a large body of published books, but her voice on the page: thoughtful, sociable, and observant. The letters preserved in libraries and printed editions suggest a woman deeply engaged in friendship, conversation, and the literary culture of her time.