Born: 4, 5 or 7 September 1754, United Kingdom
Died: 28 June 1792
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Elizabeth Sheridan, Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Eliza Ann Linley
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Elizabeth Linley, an English singer, daughter of the composer Thomas Linley, and wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
She sang in public as early as twelve years old, and was not only admired as a rarely exquisite singer, but was universally loved for her delicate and tender beauty, which has been immortalized by the great painters, Reynolds and Gainsborough.
She had many suitors, but the brilliant Sheridan gained her heart, and they were married in 1773, after a romantic elopement. Her life with this erratic genius was not always happy, but she was a devoted wife to him until her death.
Elizabeth Linley is spoken of in almost rapturous terms by those who knew her. A bishop declared her to be “the link between an angel and a woman,” and the poet, Thomas Moore said: “There has seldom perhaps existed a finer combination of all those qualities that attracted both eye and heart than this accomplished and lovely person exhibited.”