ABSTRACT
Untangling the circumstances of Matilda Betham’s incarceration proves challenging because most of her letters and overtly political publications appear to have been destroyed. Herrst biographer, niece and godchild Matilda Betham-Edwards, Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Centuryadmitted that as a ‘heedless child’ she destroyed many of her aunt’s letters. One of the other diculties in unfolding the circumstances of Betham’s incarceration, quite apart from the disappearance of her autobiographical writings, is the idiosyncrasies of her personality. Her acquaintances regarded her as a charming eccentric long before her connement. A glancing remark in one of Robert Southey’s letters reveals that Betham had expressed disapproval of his conservative opinions on religious dissenters. Betham’s institutionalization undoubtedly a ected her literary output and, ultimately, led to her disappearance from London’s literary scene.
