Fiona Brideoake’s is by far the best account of the Ladies to have appeared in some time. It is generous with earlier accounts, deeply learned and engaged with all scholars of lesbianism and the history of sexuality. It also contextualizes the Ladies brilliantly and makes great sense of their choice of a house and how they decorated. I cannot imagine a more informed or more exhilarating account of the Ladies of Langollen. This will be a book that is treasured by students and scholars as well as anyone interested in the history of ‘romantic friendship’ between women.

George E. Haggerty, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Riverside

The first book about Butler and Ponsonby in almost half a century, The Ladies of Llangollen does brilliant justice to the famous female couple about whom our knowledge will always be maddeningly limited. Blending biography and critical history, Fiona Brideoake reads the Ladies through their successive afterlives, grappling with the ways in which they have been appropriated and analyzed, mythologized and mystified in tandem with shifting sexual, social, and aesthetic norms. In so doing, The Ladies of Llangollen models a new approach to sexual history that could not be better suited to our own queer times.

Susan Lanser, Brandeis University