Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary, Lady Chudleigh
-
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 She wrote letters which were not for publication.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.
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
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
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...
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...
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
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.
Chudleigh
praised Eugenia
's ingenious Pen in a poem she published in 1703.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, 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. Miscellany Poems on Several Subjects. Thomas Combes, 1722.
50-1
Textual Production
Eugenia
The Eugenia who published The Female Advocate chose a favourite title as well as a favourite pseudonym. The title had already been used by Sarah Fyge
, 1686, and was to be used again by...
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
...
Timeline
1656
Abraham Cowley
published Poems; this volume, which included his Pindaric Odes and Miscellanies, confirmed his stature as the leading poet of the day.
11 May 1699
The Rev. John Sprint
preached a notorious misogynist wedding sermon at Sherborne in Dorset.
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.
1717
The worthy authors chosen for a miscellany entitled The Agreeable Variety by its female editor included Behn
, Philips
, Chudleigh
, and Finch
.
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
.
Texts
Mary, Lady Chudleigh,. Essays upon Several Subjects in Prose and Verse. R. Bonwick, 1710.
Mary, Lady Chudleigh,. “Introduction”. The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh, edited by Margaret J. M. Ezell, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. xvii - xxxvi.
Mary, Lady Chudleigh,. Poems on Several Occasions. B. Lintott, 1703.
Mary, Lady Chudleigh,. The Ladies Defence. John Deeve, 1701.
Mary, Lady Chudleigh,. The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh. Editor Ezell, Margaret J. M., Oxford University Press, 1993.
