Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Poet, travel writer, political hostess, philanthropist, anti-suffragist and pro-imperialist. Pseudonym: “M. E. L.” Father was the pro-Liberal William H. Leigh (2nd Baron Leigh). Married Victor A. G. Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey, in 1872, a Conservative (and later a Unionist), and she supported her husband’s politics. President of the pro-empire Victoria League from 1901, leading member of the pro-Conservative Primrose League, and President of the Children’s Happy Evenings Association (from 1894). Member of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League, which was established in 1908 and became in 1910 the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage. Author of Ballads and Poems (1878). Biographical information: Reilly, Mid-Victorian Poetry, p. 93; Orlando; ODNB. (AC)