Aged 15, Amy Dillwyn fell in love, “romantically, passionately, foolishly”, with Olive Talbot, the daughter of a Victorian millionaire. Twelve years later, in 1872, Amy began to refer to Olive as her “wife” and in the 1880s she would transcribe her passionate devotion in a series of successful novels. The truth about Amy Dillwyn’s sexuality has been quietly suppressed, but now her diaries are being edited for publication and her lesbian novels reissued. Her unusually frank private diaries are an important addition to the ongoing recovery of lesbian history, and her unconventional fiction invites a reassessment of Victorian women’s writing and the literary coding of same-sex desire.
Until recently, Amy Dillwyn was best known for her extraordinary success as an industrialist and businesswoman. Aged nearly 50, she was forced into frugal lodgings when her father died (he was a well-respected and longstanding Liberal MP for Swansea but not a very good businessman). This catastrophic change in fortune was the making of her. No longer a semi-invalid, Dillwyn transformed her father’s near-bankrupt spelter works into a lucrative company with herself as sole director. As head of Dillwyn & Co she travelled to Europe and North Africa. Aged 60 she travelled by donkey high into the snow-covered Atlas mountains and went down into underground mines in Algeria looking for high-grade zinc ore for her works.
Amy Dillwyn (right) and Olive Talbot, Buxton 1871.Opposite: Amy at home in Swansea, around 1905, with her trademark cigar
PHOTOS COURTESY OF RICHARD MORRIS. QUOTATIONS FROM THE DIARIES, COURTESY OF DAVID PAINTING