Elizabeth Ann Ashurst Bardonneau

Elizabeth "Eliza" Ann Ashurst Bardonneau (8 July 1813 – 25 November 1850) was a member of an important family of radical activists in mid-nineteenth-century England and the first translator of George Sand's work into English. The family supported causes ranging from women's suffrage to Italian unification.

On 8 July 1813, Elizabeth Ashurst was born to Elizabeth Ann Brown and William Ashurst. She was the oldest child. Her siblings were William Henry Ashurst Jr., Caroline Ashurst (Stansfeld), Emilie Ashurst (Venturi) and Matilda Ashurst (Biggs). She grew up in the Ashurst home in Muswell Hill, London.

Ashurst and Giuseppie Mazzini exchanged correspondence starting in 1844. In one transmission she sent him a translation of Spiridion by George Sand. Mazzini responded that he liked it and suggested that she also translate a work of Sand's he admired, Letter of a Traveller.

At a period in time when George Sand's free-love and independent lifestyle was quite unusual for a 19th-century woman, Elizabeth Ashurst and Matilda Hays were "broad-minded" and intrigued by the political and social messages addressed in Sand's books. Hays had received support and encouragement from William Charles Macready and George Henry Lewes to translate Sand's novels into English. Both wrote to Sand encouraging the arrangement and a friend of Hays, chaplain Edmund Larken provided funding for the enterprise.

The initial translations of Sand's works were done by Hays, Ashurst, and Larken. La Derniere Aldini, the first volume, was translated by Hays. Ashurst translated Les Maitres mosaistes and it was published in 1844. Mazzini wrote a preface for Ashurt's translation of Lettres d'un voyageur. Sand, at Mazzini's urging, invited Ashurt to her home in Nohant. Olive Class reported that "Sand was unsettled by the superficial display of feminist rebellion exhibited by her as yet still unmarried disciple and characterized her as 'a prude without modesty.'"

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