Although Mrs Delany was a highborn, well bred gentlewoman, her family were not well-off. Forced into marriage with a wealthy old man, she consoled herself with dreams of a rich widowhood - a fantasy shattered when she was left with a couple of hundred pounds a year instead of thousands. yet she was in no rush to subject herself again to a 'sick husband, a cross mother-in-law, and a thousand unavoidable impertinences'.

Instead, newly independent, she absorbed herself in early eighteenth-century London society, a seductive world of fashion, scandals and suitors. But finding herself aged 30, and a recent loser in love to a rival she likened to a 'frightened owl', she set her sights on Dublin. And Dublin embraced her.

Soon Jonathan Swift was introducing her to Patrick Delany, her second husband. It was Mrs Delany's happy marriage in Dublin that provided some of the most fertile ground for her abundant correspondence