Mary Lady Chudleigh

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Standard Name: Chudleigh, Mary,,, Lady
Birth Name: Mary Lee
Married Name: Mary Chudleigh
Titled: Mary, Lady Chudleigh
Pseudonym: Marissa
Pseudonym: M--y C.
Used Form: A Lady
Mary, Lady Chudleigh , was a versatile writer who began publishing during her middle age. Her poems and essays are earnest on religious topics but vividly dramatic in feminist debate. She wrote letters which were not for publication. Her surviving works are merely the tip of the iceberg. She reached print late in life: though she published in the eighteenth century, she must have written a great deal before that century began.
Photograph of watercolour painting of Ashton House, Devon, the ancestral home of Mary Chudleigh's husband and where she spent most of her life.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Thomas
ET had begun corresponding with Mary, Lady Chudleigh , who had sent her a copy of her poem The Ladies Defence; they became intimate friends.
ET's signed copy of Chudleigh's Poems is now in the Bodleian Library .
Mills, Rebecca. "Thanks for that Elegant Defense": Polemical Prose and Poetry by Women in the Early Eighteenth Century. Oxford University, 2000.
150n115
Mills, Rebecca. "Thanks for that Elegant Defense": Polemical Prose and Poetry by Women in the Early Eighteenth Century. Oxford University, 2000.
150
Friends, Associates Mary Astell
Elizabeth Hutcheson (an associate of nonjuring devotional writer William Law , as was Hastings) later became MA 's executor. Her friendship with Lady Chudleigh was conducted largely by letter, since Chudleigh lived in Devon. Astell...
Friends, Associates John Norris
JN conducted correspondences with a number of learned women: Mary, Lady Chudleigh (who visited him at his home), Damaris, Lady Masham (with whom his relationship ended in difference of opinion), and Elizabeth Thomas , all...
Friends, Associates John Dryden
Of these female disciples, Mary, Lady Chudleigh , and the younger Elizabeth Thomas enjoyed personal friendships with JD . But his career was conspicuous for professional enmities as well as friendships. His feud with Thomas Shadwell
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Tollet
The long epistle mentioned on the title-page, a philosophical poem On the Origin of the World, and the two Latin psalms are the works that show most revision since the earlier volume.
Londry, Michael, and Elizabeth Tollet. The Poems of Elizabeth Tollet. Oxford University, 2004.
37
A...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Astell
Among those directly influenced by this work were Judith Drake , Elizabeth Thomas , Mary, Lady Chudleigh , and Elizabeth Elstob .
Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist. University of Chicago Press, 1986.
106
George Berkeley 's use of long passages from this text, unattributed, in...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Astell
MA influenced a whole generation of writing women: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Mary Chudleigh , Elizabeth Thomas , Judith Drake , Damaris Masham (although Masham's opinions were markedly different), Elizabeth Elstob , and Jane Barker
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Lady Cowper
The diary's first volume opens with a preface which expresses conventional modesty bluntly, without the customary effort at elegance or grace: Books generally begin with a Preface which draws in the Reader to go on...
Literary responses Eugenia
Chudleigh praised Eugenia 's ingenious Pen in a poem she published in 1703.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Occupation John Dryden
By this time Dryden's two careers as writer and dramatist were well launched. The first depended on his ability to please the Stuart court, and the second on his ability to please a theatre audience...
Performance of text Jennifer Johnston
Her Selected Short Plays, published in 2003, includes the texts of Moonlight and Music (a one-acter first produced during the YK2 Festival at Dublin in 2000),Mustn't Forget High Noon, O Ananias, Azarias...
Textual Features Elizabeth Thomas
This collection contains the harvest of Thomas's poetic career. Her Muse, she says, is unfashionably incapable of dealing with love or obscenity: this shows clearly that her original poetic context was a Restoration one.
Thomas, Elizabeth, 1675 - 1731. Miscellany Poems on Several Subjects. Thomas Combes, 1722.
50-1
Textual Production Martha Fowke
The first is An Epitaph on the late Excellent and Ingenious Lady, the Lady Chudley , of Aston in Devonshire (actually more of an elegy); the second is On a Silk-Paper at a Fair Lady's...
Textual Production Elizabeth Thomas
The same year Thomas read with horror and disgust the misogynist sermon preached in Dorset by the Rev. John Sprint . This was war: she later described in a poem To the Lady Chudleigh ...
Textual Production Elizabeth Carter
EC had promised Catherine Talbot that she would undertake the project of making a scholarly translation of the Enchiridion by Epictetus .
This work of ancient Greek stoic philosophy was something of a favourite with...

Timeline

1656: Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume,...

Writing climate item

1656

Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume, which included his Pindaric Odes and Miscellanies, confirmed his stature as the leading poet of the day.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.

11 May 1699: The Rev. John Sprint preached a notorious...

Building item

11 May 1699

The Rev. John Sprint preached a notorious misogynist wedding sermon at Sherborne in Dorset.
Chudleigh, Mary, Lady. “Introduction”. The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh, edited by Margaret J. M. Ezell, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. xvii - xxxvi.
xxi

1 December 1699: John Pomfret published The Choice, a poem...

Writing climate item

1 December 1699

John Pomfret published The Choice, a poem in praise of the good life; among many other poems sharing this title, or that of The Wish, Pomfret's became a long-lived favourite.
Foxon, David F. English Verse 1701-1750. Cambridge University Press, 1975, 2 vols.
Messenger, Ann. Pastoral Tradition and the Female Talent: Studies in Augustan Poetry. AMS Press, 2001.
58, 60, 67, 79, 86-7

1717: The worthy authors chosen for a miscellany...

Women writers item

1717

The worthy authors chosen for a miscellany entitled The Agreeable Variety by its female editor included Behn , Philips , Chudleigh , and Finch .
Lavoie, Chantel Michelle. Poems by Eminent Ladies: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Anthology. University of Toronto, 1999.
120
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

September 1727: Edmund Curll issued (with no publisher mentioned...

Writing climate item

September 1727

Edmund Curll issued (with no publisher mentioned in the colophon but with his name signed to the dedication) Whartoniana in two volumes, often referred to as the work of Philip, Duke of Wharton .
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
Baines, Paul, and Pat Rogers. Edmund Curll, Bookseller. Clarendon Press, 2007.
172
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

Texts

Chudleigh, Mary, Lady. Essays upon Several Subjects in Prose and Verse. R. Bonwick, 1710.
Chudleigh, Mary, Lady. “Introduction”. The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh, edited by Margaret J. M. Ezell, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. xvii - xxxvi.
Chudleigh, Mary, Lady. Poems on Several Occasions. B. Lintott, 1703.
Chudleigh, Mary, Lady. The Ladies Defence. John Deeve, 1701.
Chudleigh, Mary, Lady. The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh. Editor Ezell, Margaret J. M., Oxford University Press, 1993.