Lady Hester Pulter
-
LHP
was a seventeenth-century poet of great skill and subtlety, whose work (transcribed into a handsome manuscript volume) remained unknown until recently because she published none of it. Her writing includes verse emblems and a prose romance.
Milestones
Perhaps June 1605
Hester Ley (later LHP
) was born in sweet Hibernie where I first had life:
Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies .
71
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives the probable place of her birth as Westbury in Wiltshire, but her editor Alice Eardley
places it in Ireland. The date is given in a pedigree made for her father as June 1605, but other sources hint at a year or two later.
Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, pp. 1-40.
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Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, pp. 1-40.
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About 1646
LHP
apparently began composing the sixty-seven poems which she eventually had transcribed into an album, together with a separate collection of emblem poems and a prose romance. She gave the poems various titles: the first is Poems Breathed Forth by the Noble Hadassah.
Pulter's scribe closed this part of her volume with a poem, unusual in style for her, which may date from much earlier: in scurrilous terms it mocks Sir William Davenant
for losing his nose to the syphilis which he contracted, says the ODNB, in 1630, and which drew much ribald comment for some years after this.
Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies .
172-4
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Davenant
Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, pp. 1-40.
1, 32ff
Between 7 February and 4 June 1647
LHP
composed the earliest poems in her volume tied to a date more specific than a year: the imprisonment of Charles I
at Holmby House in Northamptonshire.
Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies .
48ff, 58ff
June 1667 or later
LHP
composed her latest datable poem, an unfinished response to the incursion of a Dutch fleet into the River Medway in Kent, and the military destruction it caused. She relates a dream in which the river gods and goddesses gather to mourn.
Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies .
182-4
Just before 9 April 1678
LHP
died at the age of eighty-two. Her funeral was held on this date.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Biography
Birth and Family
Perhaps June 1605
Hester Ley (later LHP
) was born in sweet Hibernie where I first had life:
Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies .
71
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives the probable place of her birth as Westbury in Wiltshire, but her editor Alice Eardley
places it in Ireland. The date is given in a pedigree made for her father as June 1605, but other sources hint at a year or two later.
Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, pp. 1-40.
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Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, pp. 1-40.
13n36