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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schreiber, Lady Charlotte Elizabeth

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6033011911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 24 — Schreiber, Lady Charlotte Elizabeth

SCHREIBER, LADY CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH (1812-1895), better known as Lady Charlotte Guest, Welsh scholar and connoisseur of china, daughter of Albemarle Bertie, 9th earl of Lindsey, was born at Uffington House, Lincolnshire, on the 19th of May 1812. She married in 1833 Sir Josiah John Guest, manager and afterwards owner of the Dowlais ironworks near Merthyr Tydvil. Lady Charlotte Guest studied the Welsh language and literature, and published (3 vols., 1838-1849) The Mabinogion, from the Llyfr Coch o Hergest, and other ancient Welsh Manuscripts, with an English translation and notes. A second edition without the Welsh text appeared in 1877, and in 1881 The Boy's Mabinogion; being the earliest Welsh tales of King Arthur in the famous Red Book of Hergest, edited with an introduction by S. Lanier. Sir Josiah Guest died in 1852, and Lady Charlotte married in 1855 Charles Schreiber, M.P. for Cheltenham and Poole. She made a valuable collection of English porcelain and china, now in the South Kensington Museum, another of fans and fan leaves, presented to the British Museum, and a third of playing cards, part of which is in the British Museum. On all three subjects she left elaborate treatises. She died on the 15th of January 1895 at Canford Manor, Dorset, at the house of her eldest son Ivor Guest, Baron Wimborne.

Editions of Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the Mabinogion are in The Temple Classics (1902), The Welsh Library (1902), &c.