Elizabeth Tollet

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Standard Name: Tollet, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Tollet
ET is an under-appreciated and versatile poet of the earlier eighteenth century, whose oeuvre occupies a substantial volume. Her poetic genres include epistles to friends, occasional verse, pastoral, religious and philosophical poetry, classical translation, metrical psalms, poems about scientific discovery, epigrams, and feminist argumentation. Most unusually for a woman, she wrote original poetry in Latin as well as in English. She was also unusual in publishing a volume of poetry in her lifetime, though the collection was expanded after her death.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Sir Isaac Newton
On the night of his funeral, on 28 March, Elizabeth Tollet wrote in an elegy: Immortal and secure thy Name remains, / Which scarce the habitable World contains.
Londry, Michael, and Elizabeth Tollet. The Poems of Elizabeth Tollet. Oxford University, 2004.
210
Literary responses Rachel Speght
Some contemporary readers thought this work beyond the powers of a young woman, and therefore attributed it not to RS but to her father .
Speght, Rachel. The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght. Editor Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer, Oxford University Press, 1996.
45
The anonymous author of Ester Hath Hang'd Haman belittled...
Performance of text Jennifer Johnston
Her Selected Short Plays, published in 2003, includes the texts of Moonlight and Music (a one-acter first produced during the YK2 Festival at Dublin in 2000),Mustn't Forget High Noon, O Ananias, Azarias...
Textual Production Jean Plaidy
In the novel Murder Most Royal, JP viewed Henry VIII 's serial marriages through the eyes of two of his wives (both executed at his command), Anne Boleyn and Catherine (sometimes Katherine) Howard ...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Jane Williams
JW surveys the field diligently from the sixteenth century onwards. She insists in principle, however, that no artistic talent in a woman justifies the neglect of even the smallest act of domestic duty.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
This belief...

Timeline

December 1713
Richard Steele published Poetical Miscellanies; it included poems by Pope , Anne Finch , and himself (including praise of the unnamed and only recently identified young Elizabeth Tollet ).
September 1727
Edmund Curll issued (with no publisher mentioned in the colophon but with his name signed to the dedication) Whartoniana in two volumes, often referred to as the work of Philip, Duke of Wharton .
17 November 1750
Westminster Bridge was opened: only the second bridge over the Thames in London.
By June 1753
There was published anonymously Hypatia ; or, the history of a most beautiful, most virtuous, most learned, and every way accomplished lady.
September 1753
George Drummond , Provost of Edinburgh (and brother of the Quaker preacher and writer May Drummond ), laid the foundation stone of the new Royal Exchange there.
January 1781-December 1782
The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...
3 September 1802
William Wordsworth composed his well-known sonnetUpon Westminster Bridge, responding to the power of the city, as well as countryside or wilderness, to arouse transcendent feelings.

Texts

Tollet, Elizabeth. Poems on Several Occasions. J. Clarke, 1724.
Tollet, Elizabeth. Poems on Several Occasions. J. Clarke, 1755.
Londry, Michael, and Elizabeth Tollet. The Poems of Elizabeth Tollet. Oxford University, 2004.