My Very Dear Aunt: The Story of Anna Elizabeth Bilbrough, Mrs Joseph Town, 1842 - 1917

Orphaned twelve-year-old Anna was, in 1856, taken in by her uncle and aunt to their elegant Georgian house in Beech Grove Terrace, now within the curtailment of the University of Leeds. Anna was sent away to school from where she wrote the first of many letters to ‘My very dear Aunt’. She was married, or married off, at nineteen to a man ten years older than she was. He was a good and principled man, the managing director of Joseph Town and Sons, papermakers and merchandisers of Leeds. He provided for Anna well but left her a widow at forty-seven with eight surviving children. Anna lived in Leeds for many more years as her children grew up, married. and provided her with eleven grandchildren.
Catherine Wright, whose husband is a great grandson of Anna, has here written Anna’s story built upon the letters that Anna and others wrote at the time, and on the detailed diaries kept by her cousins, the children of her ‘very dear Aunt’. In doing this she has provided a unique insight into middle-class life in Victorian Leeds.