Martha Fowke

01 May 1689 - 17 February 1736

Standard Name: Fowke, Martha

Used Form: Martha Fowke Sansom

Birth Name: Martha Fowke

Indexed Name: Mrs Fowke

Married Name: Martha Sansom

Pseudonym: Clio

Nickname: Gloatitia

Nickname: The Amorous Lady

Apart from her unidentified periodical contributions, most of the early eighteenth-century MF 's writings in prose (epistolary and autobiographical) and poetry have a strongly erotic tone. She has been described as a poet whose writing mediated between older courtly traditions of coterie writing and the new commercial world of publication.

Gerrard, Christine. Aaron Hill: The Muses’ Projector 1685-1750. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Friends, Associates	Susanna Centlivre	In the 1720s she belonged to an informal literary club which included Anthony Hammond (with whom she was supposed to have had her most youthful liaison), Ambrose Philips , Martha Fowke , and Eliza Haywood . Bowyer, John Wilson. The Celebrated Mrs Centlivre. Duke University Press, 1952. 229-30
Friends, Associates	Eliza Haywood	At this point in her life EH entered on literary relationships with Aaron Hill (who, with some gallant condescension, was a good friend to women writers) and his circle. They included Richard Savage (who has...
Intertextuality and Influence	Sappho	Sappho 's name was an honorific for women writers for generations. George Puttenham may have been the first to use it to compliment a writing woman: in Parthienades, 1579, he said that Queen Elizabeth
Literary responses	Eliza Haywood	This year EH was praised by James Sterling , but compared to her disadvantage with Martha Fowke by Richard Savage .
Literary responses	Eliza Haywood	The personal attacks in this work provoked backlash. Haywood was either reproved or attacked in her turn by Richard Savage , Martha Fowke , and David Mallet , and their attacks established the convention that...
Literary responses	Delarivier Manley	Swift also, like his erstwhile allies Addison and Steele , was spurred by DM 's example to consternation over women's growing political activity. Though he was personally her friend, Swift undoubtedly aimed partly at her...
Occupation	John Donne	The highly literary great ladies of the Renaissance were part of Donne's writing environment. His predecessors in metrical experiment included Mary, Countess of Pembroke . He wrote in praise of her and of minor court...
Textual Features	Ann Batten Cristall	The preface expresses admiration for both Burns and George Dyer . ABC stresses her lack of education (which, critic Richard C. Sha argues, associates herself with lower-class writers like William Blake and Henry Kirke White
Textual Production	Eliza Haywood	Haywood used to be generally credited with this testimony to a women's literary tradition, but editor Phyllis Guskin judges that it was more probably written by Sansom . Fowke, Martha. Clio. Guskin, Phyllis J.Editor , University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses, 1997. 34
Textual Production	Eliza Haywood	It is not clear whether a first edition was published and read out of existence; in any case, no known copy survives. It may be that the collection's first appearance was the one called the...
Textual Production	Eliza Haywood	Aaron Hill 's Plain Dealer number 53 printed an admiring elegy on the lately-dead Manley whose author was probably either EH or Martha Fowke Sansom . Fowke, Martha. Clio. Guskin, Phyllis J.Editor , University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses, 1997. 34
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Eliza Haywood	This book builds on the writing of Delarivier Manley in the mixed genre of scandal novel or allegorised political satire. Prominent among its many targets is EH 's fellow-writer (and fellow associate with Aaron Hill
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Eliza Haywood	The work includes a separately-paginated prefatory essay: Discourse Concerning Writings Of This Nature—that is, about the nature and purposes of letters, especially love-letters, and their dangers to women. The Discourse closes ironically with two...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Eliza Haywood	The Injur'd Husband features a female villain, the Baroness de Tortillée, who poisons her husband, gets him locked up, and breaks up the honourable love of Beauclair for the virtuous woman Montamour (who then assumes...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Eliza Haywood	A Spy upon the Conjuror is made up (after an anecdotal preface) of letters addressed to Campbell by fictional clients, and presents him as a focus for love-confidences and a centre of scandal. (It again...

Timeline

19 May 1720

A New Miscellany, edited by Anthony Hammond , included work by Pope , Prior , William Bond , George Sewell , Susanna Centlivre , Delarivier Manley , Eliza Haywood , Martha Fowke , and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu .

February 1726

Richard Savage published his Miscellaneous Poems and Translations: dedicated to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , it included work by Eliza Haywood , Martha Fowke , and Miranda Hill .

9 October 1731

The Barbados Gazette, edited by Samuel Keimer , published its first issue.

Early 1741-late 1742

Caribbeana was published in London: two volumes of items from the Barbados Gazette of the previous decade.

By 22 July 1797

William Beckford published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.