Plas Newydd’s Poetics of Exchange: Portraiture, Poetry and the Intermediality of Eighteenth-Century Gift Culture

This article uses eighteenth-century correspondence and diurnal writing to unpack the complex networks of emotional, artistic, and poetic exchange that surrounded Plas Newydd, the home of the so-called “Ladies of Llangollen,” Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler. It focuses on the gifting of a printed copy of George Romney’s painting Serena Reading (1782) given to the women by the poet Anna Seward, viewed by the trio as a portrait. Using an interdisciplinary and microhistorical approach, the article places the image within two contexts: firstly, within an intricate display of gifted portraits at Plas Newydd, and secondly, in relation to Seward’s poetry. In so doing, it argues for the centrality of the cultural, emotional, and intellectual process of exchange as a way for understanding the emotional life of the period. By focusing on the literary lives of this portrait-object, the article also demonstrates the necessity of an intermedial approach to eighteenth-century visual and material culture, highlighting the productive possibilities of using textual sources to consider long-lost artworks.

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