Matilda Marian Pullan

Matilda Marian Pullan
Born	Matilda Marian Chesney 1819 Annalong, Ireland
Died	Feb. 19, 1862 United States
Pen name	Aiguillette, Mrs. Pullan
Occupation	writer
Language	English
Subject	needlework
Notable works	The Lady's Manual of Fancy-Work (1859)
Spouse	Samuel Pullan (1845–1851) Thomas Smith Metcalfe (1855–1862)
Children	Henry Hall Rawdon Chesney
Relatives	Francis Rawdon Chesney (uncle) Charles Cornwallis Chesney (brother) George Tomkyns Chesney (brother)

Matilda Marian Pullan (1819–Feb. 19, 1862)—also writing under the pen names Mrs. Pullan and Aiguillette— was a prolific and influential 19th century British writer on needlework who contributed columns to a wide selection of periodicals in the 1840s and 1850s. She was the author of numerous books on needlework, especially the decorative forms known as , and she wrote a comprehensive encyclopedia on the subject. She was also an extremely successful businesswoman who ran a needlework supply shop that expanded to become a mail order business. Towards the end of her life (cut short by cancer), she moved to America, where she opened a consulting business whose clients included the actor Laura Keene.

Matilda Marian Chesney was born in 1819 at Prospect House in Annalong, Ireland, one of six children of Sophia Augusta (Cauty) Chesney and Charles Cornwallis Chesney. Her father (who died when she was nine) was a lieutenant in the Bengal Artillery, and her uncle was General Francis Rawdon Chesney. Her brother Charles Cornwallis Chesney was a military writer and another brother, George Tomkyns Chesney, was a general.

Chesney spent a good deal of her youth in boarding schools, followed by employment as a governess. In 1845, she married a London coach maker, Samuel Pullan, a move that appears to have estranged her from her family. Her marriage ended with his death; she is listed as a widow as well as an "authoress and needlework designer" in the 1851 census.

In 1852, Chesney gave birth to an illegitimate son, Henry Hall Rawdon Chesney, whose father remains unknown

Pullan married a gentleman named Thomas Smith Metcalfe in 1855; this second marriage was not happy. Since divorce was impractical, Pullan escaped the marriage by moving to the United States with her child in 1857, where she remained until her death from uterine cancer in 1862, only 42 years old.

Pullan turned to the periodical press to earn a living, especially after she was widowed. She published articles about needlework with illustrations and detailed patterns, capitalizing on the skills she would have been taught as a girl to instruct other women about middle-class taste in clothing and home furnishings. The 1840s saw the rise of domestic instruction for young women as a new area of publishing, and Pullan had a hand in establishing or writing new columns on needlework at many women's magazines. In the end, she became "the most prolific contributor of fancywork patterns to the mid-nineteenth century press". Her success was due in part to her business skills and in part to her writing style, which was "informative, entertaining, and engaging without being polemical."

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