Elizabeth Gurney 

Elizabeth Gurney (1770-1840) (generally referred to as “Betsey”) never married; she became Eliza Gould Flower’s closest friend and appears frequently in the her correspond­ence. Portions of her library that have survived reveal the extent of Elizabeth Gurney’s interest in radical politics of the 1790s.   At the University of Michigan is a bound volume of sixteen pamphlets (shelfmark DA520.F79) all written by the radical pamphleteer William Fox and printed or sold by Martha Gurney between 1791 and 1794.  On the first title page is the signature “E Gurney, Walworth.” Another volume from her library, this one consisting of eight political pamphlets, can be found in the Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford (shelfmark 19.d.2).  Among these pamphlets, all written between 1793 and 1806, are works by Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Richards of Lynn, Benjamin Flower, Thomas Erskine, Robert Miln, and Robert Aspland. Elizabeth Gurney was a writer as well, contributing numerous articles and letters to various periodicals in her lifetime. See William Henry Gurney  Salter, ed., Some Particulars of the Lives of William Brodie Gurney and His Immediate Ancestors. Written Chiefly by Himself (London: Unwin, 1902), 59.