Background
Sara Hennell was born on 23 November 1812 at 2 Street Thomas"s Square, Hackney. Her mother had been born in Loughborough in the East Midlands in 1778 and had the maiden name of Marshall. Her father was born in 1778 and he had become a partner in the Manchester merchants of Fazy & Company
Sara"s eldest sister was Mary Hennell and her youngest was Caroline Hennell.
Career
She was the seventh (of eight) children in the Unitarian family of James and Elizabeth Hennell (born Marshall). The sisters are considered to be the basis for the fictional Meyrick family in George Eliot"s 1876 novel Daniel Deronda. Sara also increasingly became a skeptic too.
In 1851, she and her mother left Hackney in London, and moved to Ivy Cottage in Coventry in the Midlands.
In 1842, at Rosehill, Bray"s house in Coventry, she first Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot). They corresponded constantly for the following twelve years.
Eliot"s endearments including "Beloved Achates" to "Cara Sposa" indicate their intimacy. In 1844, travelling with the Brabants in Germany, Hennell met David Strauss.
In 1854, Evans consulted Hennell over her translation of Feuerbach.
At the end of their "German period", their theological and political paths diverged (Hennell was an active campaigner for women"s rights), until by 1869 Evans noted herself "irritated" during her friend"s increasingly rare visits.