In her life and certainly in her death, Anne Clifford (1590-1676) has remained a key figure in the English literary imagination. William Wordsworth and Charlotte Hemann wrote poetry about her, Hartley Coleridge included her in his The Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire, Vita Sackville-West published her diary of 1616-1619, and her friend and sometime lover Virginia Woolf modelled Orlando after her. Anne Clifford’s detailed and engaging autobiographies, her signature work of history the Great Books of Record, her monumental building projects, including five castles, and her portraits, including her majestic Great Picture (Abbot Hall Gallery, Lakeland Trust, Kendal), that she designed and commissioned, and the legends she spawned, all contribute to her place as one of the most significant figures of the seventeenth-century. Her management of her vast estates in Westmorland and Yorkshire reshaped the...
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Citation: Malay, Jessica. "Lady Anne Clifford". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 September 2011; last revised 07 May 2025. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=919, accessed 09 June 2026.]
