Lucy Hutchinson

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LH has been long known as the author of memoirs of her husband which are also a significant historical account of the Englich Civil War. Her petitions and religious writings were also known, though less read than the memoir. With the late-twentieth-century appearance in print of further works (original poems, and verse translations or paraphrases from Lucretius and from the Bible), she is beginning to assume the appearance of a major poet.

Milestones

29 January 1620

Lucy Apsley, later LH , was born at the Tower of London, first daughter in a family which had five children surviving, and was to have six more (but only one more survivor).
Lucretius, and Lucretius. “Introduction”. Lucy Hutchinson’s Translation of Lucretius, "De rerum natura", edited by Hugh De Quehen, translated by. Lucy Hutchinson, University of Michigan Press, pp. 1-20.
2
Hutchinson, Lucy. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Editor Sutherland, James, Oxford University Press.
285

1637

Lucy Apsley (later LH ), still in her teens, was already composing songs.
Hutchinson, Lucy. “Introduction, Chronology”. Order and Disorder, edited by David Norbrook, Blackwell, p. i - lviii.
xiv

Between 1665 and July 1671

LH wrote her finished version of her Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson during these years soon after his death, completing it while his associate Colonel John Wright was still in prison.
Hutchinson, Lucy. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Editor Sutherland, James, Oxford University Press.
244n3

1679

Order and Disorder; or, The World Made and Undone, an anonymous poem based on the book of Genesis which has now been convincingly ascribed to LH , appeared in print at London.
Greer, Germaine. “Horror like Thunder”. London Review of Books, pp. 22-4.
22

October 1681

LH died at past sixty.
Greer, Germaine. “Horror like Thunder”. London Review of Books, pp. 22-4.
24

By December 1806

LH 's life of her husband was at last published, by her great-great-grandson Julius Hutchinson , about 140 years after she wrote it, as the Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
10: 66
Hutchinson, Lucy. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Editor Sutherland, James, Oxford University Press.

Biography

Birth and Family

29 January 1620

Lucy Apsley, later LH , was born at the Tower of London, first daughter in a family which had five children surviving, and was to have six more (but only one more survivor).
Lucretius, and Lucretius. “Introduction”. Lucy Hutchinson’s Translation of Lucretius, "De rerum natura", edited by Hugh De Quehen, translated by. Lucy Hutchinson, University of Michigan Press, pp. 1-20.
2
Hutchinson, Lucy. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Editor Sutherland, James, Oxford University Press.
285