If Lady Charlotte is known at all, it is probably for her translation of the Mabinogion; the Welsh myths and legend and tales of King Arthur.  But she was also a noted archaeologist, a linguist, a shrewd businesswoman and politically active.  Any one of these achievements would have been enough to blaze a man's name across the history pages.

Lady Charlotte was born Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie in 1812, the same year that saw the birth of Charles Dickens, Wellington's victories in the Peninsular war and Napoleon's march  into Russia.  She was the first-born child of Albermarle, Ninth Earl of Lindsey and his second wife, Charlotte Susanna Elizabeth (nee Layard).  From that beginning, her life was marred by the simple fact of being female.  Her parents needed a son and heir and Lady Charlotte's life was erroneously recorded as having lasted only a few hours.  The Earl would no doubt have reflected on the chance of fate that had given him a highly intelligent and self-reliant daughter, while his subsequent heir was mentally handicapped.

Charlotte was aware, from a very early age, of being different from not only her own brothers and sisters, but from children in general.  She began to write a journal from the age of nine and this was to prove her only outlet for the doubts and worries that plagued her all her life.  She very quickly out-stripped her governesses and embarked on a programme of self learning, which included Persian and studying archaeology.  She made friends with the learned men of the time and almost married D'Israeli, who was attracted to her intelligence.

Before Charlotte, there was always the image of one example of womanhood --- an example that both repelled and rebuked her.  This was her own mother, worn down by repeated childbirth and two overpowering husbands, who took to her bed as a semi-invalid.  Charlotte knew this to be the result of her mother's suppression of her own intelligence and capabilities, and was constantly aware that such a life of petted indolence could await her.

Lady Charlotte lived in a time when the writings of such women as Mary Woolstonecraft had been rejected and women were being exhorted to devote their energies to the home, the children and the husband.  In fact, many writers of the age declared that a woman's life began when she married.  Women were powerless, without the vote, without the right to own their own possessions or to expect any kind of education apart from that proscribed for genteel ladies.  They were certainly not expected to learn foreign languages, dabble in politics nor to aspire to the life of a writer.

In 1833 she married John Guest of Dowlais in Merthyr Tydfil and went to live with him in his new house built near to the iron works.  She had been introduced to him by the wife of his partner, (who was later to marry D'Isaraeli) and she was attracted to the handsome man who was equally an outsider in titled London society.  Her move to Merthyr Tydfil was considered to be quite scandalous, as she was marrying into "trade" and living in an area declared only partly civilized.

Charlotte was enthralled by her new life.  There were plenty of opportunities for her to use her skills as she plunged into reforming education for the children of the workers.  She also worked on the translation of the Mabinogion during this time, interspersing her study with the births of her ten children.

But still the twin demands of a woman's proscribed domesticity and her own needs were at war.  She poured out her feelings into her journal, convinced that she was falling short of being the perfect wife for John Guest.  A typical entry would read as follows: "Everything I do now seems wrong, I can please nobody and I have myself the gnawing thought that I can never be useful and that every pursuit I have most attended to is vain --- my time has been thrown away and because I am a woman there is no profitable way of spending that which remains."

Interestingly, her periods of depression coincided with the onset of each pregnancy.  She was sick through most of her pregnancies, though right up until each birth, she tried to be as active as possible.  Once each child was born and handed over to a wet nurse she felt free to peruse her own interests once more and she would soon be busily writing and studying again.

John Guest stood as Merthyr Tydfil's first member of parliament in a constituency which encompassed both Aberdare as well as Merthyr and was divided by a mountain ridge.  Lady Charlotte campaigned tirelessly for him, winning over the few local people who were eligible to vote by speaking to them in Welsh, which she had taught herself and by using her skills in writing to convince influential men.  She by no means the only woman to use her supposedly powerless state in this way as this was the only way in which disenfranchised women could have any influence in the governing of the country, but she was one of the most successful.

Britain had no statutory rights to schooling and most working-class children were dependent upon benevolence to help them to something like a decent education.  John Guest had already begun the work of founding schools in Dowlais and Lady Charlotte become involved in their reorganisation in 1844.  Children at the Guest schools stayed until they were 14 and unlike most schools, where children were taught in large halls, classes were held in seperate rooms in the German style.  Most importantly, the Guest schools used trained teachers taken from the London colleges and were visited by eminent scientists and scholars who gave lectures to the children.

Concentrating on education gave Lady Charlotte the opportunity to work in tandem with her husband but also gave her plenty of scope for independent work.  Her sympathy with the Chartist movement led her to found the first evening classes in Wales for men and women, especially for the illiterate girls who came from the country to the iron works.

The 'Oxford Companion to the Litereate of Wales' refers to the Mabinogion as the "Welsh people's greatest contribution to the literature of Europe".  Her translation of it spurred an interest in the stories and in Celtic culture which still lasts today.  Lady Charlotte was not the first to attempt to translate the medieval Welsh tales, but she was the first to succeed.  She believed them to be exemplary tales and worked on them so as to help her own children discover their own heritage and understand the culture of the Welsh people.

Sir John Guest finally succumbed to ill health and he died in november 1852.  He had been suffering for some years and he had undergone a number of operations.  As his health deteriorated, Lady Charlotte's interest in the ironworks became crucial to the success of the company.

At first she assisted him out of duty; she visited the furnaces and forges on her very first day in Dowlais.  But daily visit made her capable of understanding and appreciating the skills involved and she was soon translating pamphlets on the subject from French into English and Welsh.  She wrote about it all in her journal and descriptions of the mills, the mixture used in the blast furnaces and the week's output joined accounts of measles and the Mabinogion.  When her son Merthyr was born she had been watching an experiment at No 9 engine only hours before and she returned as quickly as possible.  She also enjoyed trips underground to see coal and ironstone mining.

Lady Charlotte was never discouraged by her poor eyesight and she cheerfully faced danger in her quest for knowledge.  One of her journal entries, concerning a visit to a half finished blast engine, reads: "having no door, I was obliged to enter it by a ladder put against a window and as the flooring was still wanting, my only way of going over it was by climbing along the rafters and machinery, and in instance, walking along the arm of a fly-wheel".  Whilst still wearing the Victorian woman's corsets and hoop skirts!

When Sir John died, Lady Charlotte took over the running of the works as sole active Trustee.  This would not have been so unusual had she lived in earlier centuries where it was common for wealthy widows to carry on their husband's work.  But in the nineteenth century this was not so acceptable and Lady Charlotte had to learn to cope in a male dominated industry.  She had had some earlier practise while helping the manager when Sir John was away on parliamentary business, by receiving foreign visitors but now she was in sole control.  She became a business woman during a difficult time in the iron trade when orders had decreased and some iron masters were closing their works.  There were strained labour relations as the workers demanded some consideration of their basic human rights.  Lady Charlotte defended their right to spend sundays away from work, to ban the employment of young women and girls to pile iron at night and to stop paying the men in the public houses, where the money could be quickly drunk away.  She worked to persuade Merthyr's other iron masters to agree to a uniform rate of pay, instead of trying to out-bid each other.  Many working-class people were emigrating to Australia at this time, especially from south Wales.

When the Penydarren colliers went on strike for higher pay, the other employers wanted to close down the four ironworks until the strikers capitulated.  Lady Charlotte was horrified at this form of blackmail by using the strikers own class and she stood out against the others.  The Dowlais men did strike, but they returned on Lady Charlotte's terms and they were not at all violent during the strike as others were.

The journal was suddenly abandoned and was not resumed until 1855, when she wrote about the scene that was caused when she announced that she was soon to be married for a second time.  In april 1855, lady Charlotte married Charles Schreiber, her eldest son's tutor, who had joined the family just 24 days after Sir John's death.

Charles Schreiber was of German stock and more than 10 years younger than Lady Charlotte but he was perhaps more in sympathy with her ideas and outlook than Sir John had been.  She certainly seemed to have no pangs of conscience over the time she spent away from domestic duties when she was with Schreiber.  Sadly, she suffered three miscarriages and the couple were never to have a child of their own.  Relationships with the Guest children were strained as they were still frankly mourning their father.  The younger children especially, never accepted him as their stepfather.  Lady Charlotte must have remembered her own childhood as she had also had a stepfather that she resented and disliked.

The marriage coincided with a reduction in the family's fortunes once the eldest son, Ivor, inherited the Dorset home and needed money to run it.  Also one son ran up debts while in the army and these had to be met.  All was not well at the Dowlais works as the manager was not willing to let Ivor join him.  They had invested heavily in machinery to begin making steel rails for the railways.

Lady Charlotte's life changed completely as she now turned away from business and moved in more artistic circles.  She became a friend of the singer Jenny Lind and mixed with the royal set.  She met a number of artistic and literary people, including Tennyson, Julia Margaret Cameron and the pre-Raphaelites.  The Schreibers began seriously collecting china.  Their collection was presented to the Victoria and Albert Museum after Charles' death and lady Charlotte's writing on the subject are in the British Museum.  They travelled widely all over Europe and the Middle East even up to Lady Charlotte's 70th year.

Charles Schreiber died when they were travelling in Portugal.  Lady Charlotte eventually resumed travelling and collecting, though she now concentrated on antique playing cards, writing three volumes on the subject.  Right up until her death, she worked tirelessly for charities such as the Turkish Compassionate Fund, building shelters for taxi drivers and enjoying the company of such people as Oscar Wilde.  She died on january 15 1895 after a short illness.

(If you are intrigued by this fascinating Victorian woman, read "Lady Charlotte: A Biography of the Nineteenth Century" by Revel Guest and Angela V John, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ISBN 0-297-793898-0.)