Dorothy Osborne

Dorothy, Lady Temple , 1671, portrait by Gaspar Netscher

Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple (* 1627 in Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire , England , † 1695 in Moor Park, Surrey ) was a British writer of letters and the wife of Sir William Temple .

Live and act

Osborne was the youngest of ten children in a royalist family. Her father was Sir Peter Osborne, lieutenant governor of Guernsey under Charles I. Her mother was Dorothy Danvers, sister of the politician John Danvers, who was convicted of regicide in 1659 .

After turning down various applicants such as her cousin Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds , Henry Cromwell (son of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell) and Sir Justinian Isham, she married Sir William Temple in 1655, a man with whom she had long been one led secret correspondence. Osborne was known for her witty and progressive letters. Only Osborne's page of his correspondence with Temple has survived.

Also of note is Osborne's refusal to marry a suitor she disliked, despite strong and prolonged pressure from her family. She fell in love with Temple of the same age in 1649 at the age of nineteen. Both families were against marriage for financial reasons. Osborne resisted her family and remained unmarried until finally both fathers had died and the couple was able to enforce their union with both families and married on December 25, 1654. The marriage ended in 1695 with the death of Lady Temple.

Lady Temple had nine children, all but two of whom died as children. Her daughter Diana died of smallpox at fourteen. Their son John married, had two daughters named Elizabeth and Dorothy Temple, and committed suicide as a young man.

Lady Temple was buried in Westminster Abbey .

Virginia Woolf discusses Osborne's correspondence with Temple in her essay A Room of Its Own and relates it to the work of Margaret Cavendish , the Duchess of Newcastle, a contemporary of Osborne.

Web links

• Dorothy Osborne in Project Gutenberg