Mehetabel Wright

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MH is a lyric poet whose depth of passion, in her few surviving pieces, is remarkable. As far as posterity is concerned she was silenced, if not directly by her family, then by their embarrassment in conjunction with her own despair and the indifference or disapproval of society.

Milestones

Probably after mid-1697

MW was born at Epworth in Lincolnshire, the seventh of probably nineteen children of whom ten lived to grow up.
The number of children is not established beyond doubt. It was in May or June of this year that the Wesley family settled at Epworth, Mehetabel's birthplace.
Lonsdale, Roger, editor. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford University Press.
110
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press.

September 1728

MW probably wrote her now well-known death-wish poem, To an Infant expiring the second Day of its Birth when one of her babies died.
Feminist Companion Archive.

21 March 1750

MW died, likely in London.
Lonsdale, Roger, editor. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford University Press.
111
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press.

Biography

Birth and Family

Probably after mid-1697

MW was born at Epworth in Lincolnshire, the seventh of probably nineteen children of whom ten lived to grow up.
The number of children is not established beyond doubt. It was in May or June of this year that the Wesley family settled at Epworth, Mehetabel's birthplace.
Lonsdale, Roger, editor. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford University Press.
110
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press.

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