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 Eleanor Butler Eleanor Butler (also known as Nell Butler or Irish Nell; born c. 1665) was an indentured white woman who married an African slave in colonial Maryland in 1681. Butler, who was of Irish origin, was an indentured servant to Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore. At around 16 years of age she announced her intention to marry a man referred to only as "Negro Charles". A 1664 Maryland law outlined the legal status of a free woman who voluntarily married a slave: she would serve the master of her husband until his death, and any offspring of their union