The MacDonald sisters were four British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 sisters, notable for their marriages to well-known people of the Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

. Alice, Georgiana, Agnes and Louisa were four of the seven daughters and 11 children of Reverend George Browne MacDonald (1805–1868), a Methodist minister, and Hannah Jones (1809–1875).

Biographies

There were 11 children in the Macdonald family: seven daughters and four sons. Mary (1834–1836) was the firstborn; followed by Henry (1836–1891), called Harry, who introduced his younger sisters Georgiana and Agnes to his artistic friends, known as the Birmingham Set

Birmingham Set

The Birmingham Set, sometimes called the Pembroke Set or later The Brotherhood, was a group of students at the University of Oxford in England in the 1850s, most of whom were from Birmingham or had studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham...

; then Alice; Caroline (1838–1854); Georgiana; Frederick William (1842–1928); Agnes; Louisa; Walter (1847-1847); Edith (1848–1937), who never married, and lived at home until her mother's death; and Herbert (1850–1851).

Alice

Alice (1837–1910) married John Lockwood Kipling

John Lockwood Kipling

John Lockwood Kipling, C.I.E. was an English art teacher, illustrator, museum curator, and father of author Rudyard Kipling.-Biography:...

, and was the mother of Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

. A Viceroy of India once said, "Dullness and Mrs. Kipling cannot exist in the same room."

Georgiana

Georgiana (1840–1920) married the pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones

Edward Burne-Jones

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...

. She became the mother-in-law of John William Mackail

John William Mackail

John William Mackail O.M. was a Scottish man of letters and socialist, now best remembered as a Virgil scholar. He was also a poet, literary historian and biographer....

 and grandmother of Angela Thirkell

Angela Thirkell

Angela Margaret Thirkell , was an English and Australian novelist. She also published one novel, Trooper to Southern Cross, under the pseudonym Leslie Parker.-Early life:...

.

Louisa

Louisa (1845–1925) married the industrialist Alfred Baldwin and was the mother of prime minister Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC was a British Conservative politician, who dominated the government in his country between the two world wars...

, and grandmother to Oliver Baldwin

Oliver Baldwin, 2nd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley

Oliver Ridsdale Baldwin, 2nd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley , known as Viscount Corvedale from 1937 to 1947, was a British politician who had a quixotic career at political odds to his father, three-time Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.Baldwin was educated at Eton College, and grew up in the shadow of his...

. Louisa wrote novels, short stories, and poetry, sometimes credited as "Mrs. Alfred Baldwin."

Further reading

• Judith Flanders. A Circle of Sisters: Alice Kipling, Georgiana Burne Jones, Agnes Poynter, and Louisa Baldwin. ISBN 0-393-05210-9
• Ina Taylor. Victorian Sisters. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987) (Shortly to be republished by Ellingham Press)

External links

• 'A Circle of Sisters': Eminent Victorians at New York Times.