Louisa Matilda Spooner (1820-1886) was born in Maentwrog, the fifth of ten children, to English parents. The Cambrian Journal praised her first novel, Gladys of Harlech, for its ‘true spirit of pat...view moreLouisa Matilda Spooner (1820-1886) was born in Maentwrog, the fifth of ten children, to English parents. The Cambrian Journal praised her first novel, Gladys of Harlech, for its ‘true spirit of patriotism’ at a time when few novels were ‘illustrative of Welsh manners and customs, that a genuine Cymro could for a moment tolerate’. Two years later, her second novel, Country Landlords (1860), followed. This time, Spooner challenged ideas of local government as she linked the nationalist movement in Italy of the 1830s with social reforms undertaken at home in north Wales. In her final novel, The Welsh Heiress (1868), greed, murder, insanity and alcoholism creep into Victorian Merionethshire. Spooner never married. She lived with her elder brother, the railway engineer Charles Easton Spooner, and his family at Bron-y-Garth in Porthmadog. Today, the Spooner family name lives on in the town in connection with the Ffestiniog Railway.view less