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Lady Mount Cashell – The Sisters of Nansfield: A Tale for young women

Among the new arrivals at Peter Harrington in London in May is this 1824 work by Margaret King, Lady Mount Cashell, a first edition of the author’s only published novel. It is the story of two young women who are induced by the untimely death of their father to consider society and its conventions with a more critical eye. King was a one-time pupil and great admirer of Mary Wollstonecraft, and a mentor to Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont. In her novel King critiques the education normally bestowed upon upper class women and their financial dependency on men.

Born into the Anglo Irish Kingsborough family Margaret’s mother was Caroline Fitzgerald who had been married at 15 to Viscount Kingsborough, later Earl of Kingston whose family seat was Mitchelstown Castle in Co. Cork. Caroline was a first cousin of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. One of Margaret’s governesses at Mitchelstown was Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1791 Margaret married Stephen Moore, 2nd Earl of Mount Cashell. She opposed the abolition of the Irish Parliament and counted Robert Emmett among her circle. In Rome in the early 19th century she began an affair with George William Tighe of Ashford, Co. Wicklow whose political views were close to her own and legally separated in 1812. In Germany, disguised as a man, she studied medicine at the University of Jena and is known to have conducted a dispensary for the poor of Pisa. She published a very popular medical guide, Advice to young mothers on the physical education of children by a grandmother. Styling themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Mason George and Margaret set up a home in Pisa where they were visited often by the poet Shelley, his wife Mary Shelley (author Frankenstein and daughter of Wollstonecraft) and their translator Claire Clairmont. The Sisters of Nansfield is priced at £2,500.