Mary Lloyd

Mary Charlotte Lloyd (23 January 1819 – 13 October 1896 ) was a Welsh sculptor who studied with John Gibson in Rome and lived for decades with the well-known philosopher, animal welfare advocate, and feminist Frances Power Cobbe.

Biography Lloyd was born in Denbighshire, Wales, the eighth of seventeen children, and the first of six girls, to Edward Lloyd of Rhagatt and his wife Frances Maddocks. In 1853 she was working in the studio of Welsh sculptor John Gibson in Rome, along with the American sculptor Harriet Hosmer.

Her elder brother (1811–1865), "said to be a humorous poet, an excellent painter and a skilled photographer", inherited estates at Rhagatt, Merionethshire, and Berth, Denbighshire. He became High Sheriff of Denbighshire in 1863, before dying childless.

Lloyd met Frances Power Cobbe in the winter of 1861–1862, in Rome. Mary and Frances networked with like-minded women in Italy in the period, both being nonconformist, with a feminist outlook. In 1863, they settled together in London.

In 1858, Lloyd inherited a share in the Welsh landed estate of Hengwrt. This allowed Lloyd to refer to herself as a landed proprietor when signing petitions supporting women's suffrage, and also gave her some local political rights, such as the ability to appoint a vicar.

Lloyd died in 1896 from heart disease and was buried together with Frances Power Cobbe in Saint Illtud Church Cemetery, Llanelltyd.

Mary Lloyd is the fictionalized narrator of a 2002 story by Emma Donoghue, "The Fox on the Line", about the relationship between Lloyd and Cobbe, and their anti-vivisection activism.