Elizabeth Linley
English Singer
1754 – 1792 A.D.

Elizabeth Linley, an English singer, daughter of the composer Thomas Linley, and wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

She sang in public as early as twelve years old, and was not only admired as a rarely exquisite singer, but was universally loved for her delicate and tender beauty, which has been immortalized by the great painters, Reynolds and Gainsborough.

She had many suitors, but the brilliant Sheridan gained her heart, and they were married in 1773, after a romantic elopement. Her life with this erratic genius was not always happy, but she was a devoted wife to him until her death.

Elizabeth Linley is spoken of in almost rapturous terms by those who knew her. A bishop declared her to be “the link between an angel and a woman,” and the poet, Thomas Moore said: “There has seldom perhaps existed a finer combination of all those qualities that attracted both eye and heart than this accomplished and lovely person exhibited.”

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.