Anne Wharton

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AW was a late-seventeenth-century poet who also wrote verse drama. Her recent editors identified with some certainty twenty-four of her poems; their hope, realised within a few years of their edition, was that this tiny fraction of her original output would be augmented with new discoveries.
Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, 1997, pp. 1 - 124.
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Reproduction of a black-and-white image of Anne Wharton from A catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, 1806. Her hair is long with short pieces in the front that are curled, and she is wearing a voluminous dress.

Milestones

20 July 1659
Anne Lee (later AW ) was born, to a mother who was mortally ill and a father who was dead.
Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, 1997, pp. 1 - 124.
11
1679
AW probably began her historical verse drama Love's Martyr; or, Witt above Crowns.
Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, 1997, pp. 1 - 124.
56
29 October 1685
AW , aged twenty-six, died at Adderbury, another of her family's manors near Woodstock; most reports mentioned convulsions before her death.
She suffered long and intensely. Her editors rehearse the possibilities: syphilis, epilepsy, tuberculosis, the effects of medical treatment—or poison.
Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, 1997, pp. 1 - 124.
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Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, 1997, pp. 1 - 124.
96-7

Biography

AW was christened Ann, though the spelling Anne is more generally used. She is often wrongly credited with a title, because of her husband's remarriage and ennoblement after her early death. Unlike her successor, she was never Lady Wharton but only Mrs Wharton (though she often calls herself the Lady Anne). Most biographical accounts of her are wildly inaccurate.
Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, 1997, pp. 1 - 124.
3-4 and passim

Birth and Family

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