Marie Louise, Empress of the French (1810–1815) as consort of Napoleon I and duchess of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla (1816–47), daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (later Emperor of Austria as Francis I.) She was married (1810) to N...

Baronin Therese von Droßdik, born Therese Malfatti, was an Austrian musician and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven. She is best known as one of the supposed dedicatees of Beethoven's famous bagatelle, Für Elise, WoO 59....

Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia was a queen consort of the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, due to nineteenth century Dutch transliteration conventions, she is better known as Anna Paulowna. She was born as the eighth child and sixth...

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the wo...

Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning published her first poem in 1820, at the age of fourteen. In 1826, she published her first collection of poems, entitled "An Essay on Mind and Other Poems." In 1845, she met fellow poet Robert Brown...

Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies was Queen consort of Spain (1829 to 1833) and Regent of Spain (1833 to 1840). Born in Palermo, Sicily, Italy on 27 April 1806, she was the daughter of King Francis I of the Two Sicilies by his second wife...

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United Sta...

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the An...

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. She first published her works (including her best known novel...

Victoria was the daughter of Edward, the Duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. She was born in Kensington Palace in London on May 24th, 1819. In 1837 Queen Victoria took the throne after the death of her uncle William IV. Due t...

Florence Nightingale was an English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager of nurses trained by her during the Crimean War, where she organised the t...

Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi was the queen of the Maratha-ruled princely state of Jhansi, situated in the north-central part of India. She was one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and for Indian nationalists a symbol...

Mathilde Wesendonck was a German poet and author. She is best known as the friend and possibly mistress of Richard Wagner, who set five songs to her words, called the Wesendonck Lieder. By 1857, Wagner had become infatuated with Mathilde. I...

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Although part of a prominent family with strong ties to its community, Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation. After studying at...

Isabella II was Queen regnant of Spain from 1836 - 1868. She was Spain's first and so far only queen regnant, although she is sometimes considered the third Queen Regnant of Spain, as previous monarchs of Leon and Castile were counted as ki...