PIOZZI, HESTER LYNCH (1741-1821), English writer, well known as the friend (Mrs. Thrale) of Samuel Johnson, was born on Jan. 16, 1741, her father being John Salusbury of Bobbel, Carnarvonshire. In 1763 she married Henry Thrale, a rich South wark brewer, whose house was at Streatham on the south-east corner of Tooting Bec Common. There was very little sympathy between the lively girl and Thrale, who was 13 years her senior, but gradually she drew round her a distinguished circle of friends.
She was introduced to Samuel Johnson in 1765 by Arthur Murphy, who was an old friend of her husband's. In 1766 Johnson paid a long visit to Streatham, and from that time was more or less domesticated with the Thrales. (See JOHNSON, SAMUEL. ) Fanny Burney was another of her friends. She was very sensitive, and sometimes thought that Mrs. Thrale gave' herself airs of patronage. Meanwhile, in 1772, Thrale was threatened with bankruptcy. The situation was saved by his wife's efforts, and in the next year Thrale travelled, leaving her in charge of his affairs. He was twice returned for the borough of Southwark, chiefly through her efforts. In 1781 Thrale died, and Dr. Johnson helped the widow with her business arrangements, advising her to keep on the brewery, until she "cured his honest heart of its incipient passion for trade, by letting him into some, and only some, of its mysteries." The brewery was finally sold for £135,000.
Mrs. Thrale had met Gabriele Piozzi, an Italian musician, in 1780. In 1784 they were married. Johnson told Miss Burney that he drove the memory of Mrs. Thrale from his mind, burning every
letter of hers on which he could lay his hand. The Piozzis presently left England to travel in Italy. At Florence they fell in with Robert Merry and the other "Della Cruscan" writers ridiculed by William Gifford in his Maeviad and Baviad, and she con tributed some verses to their Florence Miscellany in 1785. In 1786 she published Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, during the last twenty years of his life, which was severely criticized by Boswell. She was ridiculed by "Peter Pindar" in Bozzy and Piozzi; or the British Biographers, A Town Eclogue (1786). But though Miss Burney and some others held aloof, the Piozzis found plenty of friends when they returned to London in 1787. Piozzi died at Brynbella, a villa he had built on his wife's Flintshire estate in 1809, and Mrs. Piozzi gave up her Welsh property to her adopted son, and spent most of the rest of her life at Bath and Clifton. She retained her vivacity to the last, celebrating her Both birthday by a ball to six or seven hundred people at Bath. She died at Clifton on May 2, 1821.
From 1776 to 1809 she kept a note-book which she called "Thrali ana." Her well-known poem of the "Three Warnings" is to be found in many popular collections. Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson appeared in 1788; Observations and Reflections made in the course of a Journey through France, Italy and Germany, in 1789; and in 1801 she published Retrospection; or a review of the most