Twenty letters in a cover. They include:
Lady Maria Josepha Stanley, née Holroyd (1771-1863), letter writer and liberal advocate, was born on 3 January 1771, the second of three children of John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield (1741-1821), politician. From 1783 she was educated by the historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). On 11 October 1796 she married John Thomas Stanley, later 7th Baronet and 1st Baron Stanley of Alderley (1766-1850) of Alderley Park, Cheshire. They lived for the next half century at Alderley Park in Cheshire.
Maria wrote thousands of letters, notable for their compassion for the Jews, the elderly, the poor, and the Irish. Another of her interests was the education of women, as shown in correspondence with her daughter-in-law Henrietta Maria Stanley (1807-1895), a founder of Girton College, Cambridge. Maria Josepha Stanley died on 1 November 1863 at Holmwood, Shiplake, near Henley, Oxfordshire, her home since her husband's death, and was buried near her husband in the chancel of St Mary's Church, Alderley, Cheshire. Selections of her letters were collected and published by Jane Adeane, her granddaughter, and later by Nancy Mitford.
Source: Marvin Stern, 'Stanley , Lady Maria Josepha (1771-1863)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. By permission of Oxford University Press - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/74489.
Correspondence between Maria Joseph Stanley and Henrietta Maria Stanley was published in Nancy Mitford, The ladies of Alderley: being the letters between Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley of Alderley and her daughter-in-law Henrietta Maria Stanley during the years 1841-1850 (London: Chapman & Hall, 1938).
