Sep 22, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min · 12 segments
Two women climbed out of their windows in 1778, dressed as men, and ran for the sea. Drift off to sleep with the story of the Ladies of Llangollen. Lady Eleanor Butler of Kilkenny Castle and the…
Imagine, if you will, the spring of seventeen sixty-eight in County Kilkenny in the south of Ireland.
Kilkenny is an old town on a slow river called the Nore.
Its castle belongs to the Butlers, one of the great families of Ireland, and in that family, there is a daughter named Eleanor.
She is twenty-nine years old.
They call her a bookworm.
They are not sure what to do with her.
She is not married, and she does not seem to want to.
A few miles away at a house near the village of Innisjaug, there is a girl of thirteen named Sarah Ponsonby.
She is an orphan.
Both of her parents are gone, and she has been sent to live with relatives and then to a boarding school in Kilkenny, and she is the kind of quiet, watchful child that adults describe as sensible when they mean that she has learned to take up very little room.
Somebody introduces them.
Eleanor is asked to keep an eye on the girl, to help with her reading, to be a sort of older friend.
That is how it starts.
A book probably.
A conversation about a book.
Now, let ten years pass slowly, the way years pass in a provincial town.
Sarah leaves school at eighteen and goes to live at the big house near Innisjaug with a kindly aunt called Lady Betty and Lady Betty's husband, Sir William.
Eleanor stays with her family at the castle in Kilkenny.
The two of them write to each other.
They visit.
They read the same books so that they can talk about them.
Over those ten years, letter by letter, they build a plan.
The plan is simple, and it is not simple at all.
They want to live together somewhere quiet on their own.
Imagine, if you will, the spring of seventeen sixty-eight in County Kilkenny in the south of Ireland.
Kilkenny is an old town on a slow river called the Nore.
Its castle belongs to the Butlers, one of the great families of Ireland, and in that family, there is a daughter named Eleanor.
She is twenty-nine years old.
They call her a bookworm.
They are not sure what to do with her.
She is not married, and she does not seem to want to.
A few miles away at a house near the village of Innisjaug, there is a girl of thirteen named Sarah Ponsonby.
She is an orphan.
Both of her parents are gone, and she has been sent to live with relatives and then to a boarding school in Kilkenny, and she is the kind of quiet, watchful child that adults describe as sensible when they mean that she has learned to take up very little room.
Somebody introduces them.
Eleanor is asked to keep an eye on the girl, to help with her reading, to be a sort of older friend.
That is how it starts.
A book probably.
A conversation about a book.
Now, let ten years pass slowly, the way years pass in a provincial town.
Sarah leaves school at eighteen and goes to live at the big house near Innisjaug with a kindly aunt called Lady Betty and Lady Betty's husband, Sir William.
Eleanor stays with her family at the castle in Kilkenny.
The two of them write to each other.
They visit.
They read the same books so that they can talk about them.
Over those ten years, letter by letter, they build a plan.
The plan is simple, and it is not simple at all.
They want to live together somewhere quiet on their own.
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