Judith Cowper Madan

26 August 1702 - 07 December 1781

JCM (formerly Judith Cowper), like almost all of her relations, was a frequent writer of occasional poetry. Most of her surviving poems, and all the major ones, date from about 1720-8, that is from either before or not long after her marriage. She writes in some ambitious forms (a survey of world poetry, an Ovidian epistle, erotic love-poetry), and shows herself sensitive to gender issues, but even in satire she voices only the most muted rebellion, showing herself happiest and most fluent in celebration and deference.

Rumbold, Valerie. “The Poetic Career of Judith Cowper: An Exemplary Failure?”. Pope, Swift, and Women Writers, edited by Donald C. Mell, University of Delaware Press, 1996, pp. 48 -66.

Milestones

26 August 1702

Judith Cowper (later JCM ) was born, probably at her father's estate of Hertingfordbury Park in Hertfordshire, the only girl in a family of five.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Lonsdale, Roger, editor. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford University Press, 1990.

1717

Judith Cowper (later Madan) dated a juvenile poem of compliment, written in Mr Waller 's Poems: six heroic couplets, which her daughter Maria later transcribed into a notebook.

Madan, Falconer. The Madan Family. Oxford University Press, 1933.

264

9 September 1727

Abelard to Eloisa, an epistolary reply written in 1720 by Judith Cowper (who by now was Judith Madan) to Pope 's Eloisa to Abelard, was published in William Pattison 's posthumous works.

The title-page bore the date 1728, but David Foxon dates the book 1727.

Foxon, David F. English Verse 1701-1750. Cambridge University Press, 1975.

P128-37

Foxon, David F. English Verse 1701-1750. Cambridge University Press, 1975.

P128-37

7 December 1781

JCM died after twenty-five years as a widow, at her London home in Stafford Row (which is now part of Buckingham Gate).

Madan, Falconer. The Madan Family. Oxford University Press, 1933.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Biography

Birth and Family

26 August 1702

Judith Cowper (later JCM ) was born, probably at her father's estate of Hertingfordbury Park in Hertfordshire, the only girl in a family of five.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Lonsdale, Roger, editor. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford University Press, 1990.