Elizabeth Ponsonby (28 December 1900 – 31 July 1940) was an English aristocrat who was a prominent member of the Bright Young Things, well-connected socialites who featured heavily in the contemporary tabloid press for what were perceived to be their hedonistic antics.
The daughter of Arthur Ponsonby, diplomat and Foreign Office minister, later created Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, Elizabeth was born at 9 Victoria Square, London. She descended from the Ponsonby Earls of Bessborough.Arthur Ponsonby: The Politics of Life, Raymond A. Jones, 1989, Helm, pg 1 Her mother, Dolly (1876–1963), was daughter of the composer Hubert Parry.Arthur Ponsonby: The Politics of Life, Raymond A. Jones, 1989, Helm, pg 8 David Plunket Greene was her cousin.Evelyn Waugh and the forms of his time, Robert Murray Davis, 1989, Catholic University of America Press, pg 145
Alongside Babe Plunket-Greene, Brian Howard and Edward Gathorne-Hardy, Ponsonby was considered to be one of the leaders of the group.Arthur Ponsonby: The Politics of Life, Raymond A. Jones, 1989, Helm, pg 159 Her father was displeased by her notoriety, commenting "I think she is made for better things" and regretting that she was "famous for her extravagant pranks".Arthur Ponsonby: The Politics of Life, Raymond A. Jones, 1989, Helm, pg 183
Her 1929 marriage to (John) Denis Cavendish Pelly,Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage, 1985, Debrett's Peerage Ltd, pg 682 an assistant in a Bond Street gramophone shop later employed by the Gas Light and Coke Company, son of Major William Francis Henry Pelly of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and descendant of Sir John Pelly, 1st Baronet,Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 2003, volume 1, pg 48, and volume 3, pg 3085Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation, 1918-1940, D. J. Taylor, 2007, Chatto & Windus, pg 98The Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality, vol. 147, 1929, Ingram Bros., pg 137Arthur Ponsonby: The Politics of Life, Raymond A. Jones, 1989, Helm, pg 196 was dissolved in 1933, and Ponsonby later entered a relationship with garage proprietor John Ludovic ('Ludy') Ford.Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation, 1918-1940, D. J. Taylor, 2007, Chatto & Windus, pg 240 She died in 1940, according to her brother, Matthew, of alcoholism.Evelyn Waugh: 1924-1966, John Howard Wilson, 1996, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, pg 78Arthur Ponsonby: The Politics of Life, Raymond A. Jones, 1989, Helm, pg 231
Ponsonby was a model for Agatha Runcible in Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies.Dictionary of Real People, M. C. Rintoul, 1993, Routledge, pg 746
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