Mary Masters

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Standard Name: Masters, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Masters
Pseudonym: Maria
MM was a self-taught poet, probably born at the end of the seventeenth century, who wrote from inclination and published because she needed the money. Her feminist opinions (expressed mainly in letters) are those current in Queen Anne 's reign, though not published till a generation later. She has historically attracted attention almost exclusively because she enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Samuel Johnson .
A photograph of four lines of a poem by Mary Masters, written in an early, unidentified hand, beginning: "Tis religion that can give / S[w]eetest pleasure while we Live . . . ."

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Savage
A cousin of MS , a niece of her father who became by marriage Goodeth Pegge, was at one point landlady to the poet Mary Masters .
Ashfield, Andrew. Emails to Isobel Grundy about Mary Savage. 31 Mar. 2016.
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Carter
EC associated on terms of warmth and equality with men of letters or culture such as Samuel Johnson , Samuel Richardson , Thomas Birch , Moses Browne , Richard Savage , William and John Duncombe
Friends, Associates Samuel Johnson
Johnson had a talent for friendship which he kept well exercised: the names mentioned here represent only a selection of his friendships. His early London friends, whom he met during a comparatively poorly documented period...
Publishing Mary Barber
He concluded, let Mrs Howard know that I recommend you to the Queen ,
qtd. in
Stewart, Wendy. “The Poetical Trade of Favours: Swift, Mary Barber, and the Counterfeit Letters”. Lumen, Vol.
xviii
, 1999, pp. 155-74.
170
though he declined to supply a direct introduction to a potential royal patron. Two months later Gay wrote to Swift...
Textual Production Anne Finch
One passage from a long Pindaric ode entitled All is Vanity (present in Finch's early octavo ms and in her printed collection) has broken loose and achieved a life of its own. Whereas the entire...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Masters, Mary. Familiar Letters and Poems on Several Occasions. D. Henry and R. Cave, 1755.
Masters, Mary. Poems on Several Occasions. T. Browne, 1733.