And finally (because tomorrow is a Bank Holiday in the UK, even though one of us will be in the shop sending out orders and the rest of us will be having the same kind of day as we’ve been having for the last six weeks): a painting (previously on the Persephone Letter) touched up by the brilliant artist Michael Alford. It’s Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo by Richard Samuel and it shows a group of women writers 250 years ago – in 1778 to be precise. They are Elizabeth Carter, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Hannah More, Catharine Macaulay, Elizabeth Montagu, Angelica Kauffman, Elizabeth Griffith, Elizabeth Ann Linley and Charlotte Lennox. Now in masks.
7 May 2020