Lesbian Fanny gladdens my heart:—You know not how I love her." Wollstonecraft's first novel "", in part, addressed her relationship with Fanny Blood. Perhaps the most famous of these romantic friendships was between Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, nicknamed the Ladies of Llangollen. Butler and Ponsonby eloped in 1778, to the relief of Ponsonby's family (concerned about their reputation had she run away with a man) to live together in Wales for 51 years and be thought of as eccentrics. Their story was considered "the epitome of virtuous romantic friendship" and inspired poetry by Anna Seward and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Diarist
Eleanor Butler went into effect. Because the new law did not apply retroactively, and perhaps also because Lord Baltimore left Maryland indefinitely in 1684, Butler and Charles lived out the rest of their lives as the slaves of William Boarman, Eleanor Butler's husband's owner. They had seven or eight children, all born after the repeal of the 1664 law, but these were nonetheless born slaves. One son, Jack, apparently escaped and later bought his freedom from the Boarman family. The rest remained chattel. In October 1770, two of their descendants, William and Mary Butler, still enslaved, filed suit for their freedom on