Mary Mollineux (born Mary Southworth, 1651–1696) was a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

poet who differed from many of her

contemporaries because of an early education in Latin, Greek, science, and arithmetic. Probably the daughter of Catholic parents who converted to Quakerism, she met her husband Henry Mollineux (died 1719), who wrote Quaker tracts, while they were both imprisoned in Lancaster Castle in 1684 for attending Quaker meetings. Her husband was imprisoned again in 1690 for refusing to pay tythes to the Church of England and Mary petitioned for his release.

Works

''The Fruits of Retirement'' (1702) was posthumously published. The book is a compilation of Mollineux's manuscript poetry put together by her cousin Frances Owen and printed by the female Quaker publisher Tace Sowle. It went through six editions in the 18th century. The poems blend erudition with activism and also develop literary constructions about exile, retreat, and retirement more typical of

Katherine Philips Katherine or Catherine Philips (1 January 1631/2 – 22 June 1664), also known as "The Matchless Orinda", was an Anglo-Welsh royalist poet, translator, and woman of letters. She achieved renown as a translator of Pierre Corneille's '' Pompée'' ...

and (later) Anne Finch than of Quaker polemicists. Owen was inspired to collect them, he said, because they would work in service of Quakerism. They are largely biblical in inspiration and reveal little of her Classical education. The first, 'The Fall of Man', is dated 1663. 'A Meditation' (1668), for example, expands on verses from the Book of Lamentations to draw a comparison with the dire situation of Dissenters at that time.Achinstein, op. cit., p. 81.

Bibliography

* Achinstein, Sharon, ''Literature and Dissent in Milton's England'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

*---, "Romance of the Spirit: Female Sexuality and Religious Desire in Early Modern England," ''ELH'' 69.2 (2002): 413-438. *Donoghue, Emma (ed.), ''Poems between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship, and Desire'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). *Ezell, Margaret J.M., ''Social Authorship and the Advent of Print'' (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). *---, ''Writing Women's Literary History'' (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). *Schofield, Mary Anne. Women's Speaking Justified': The Feminine Quaker Voice, 1662-1797, ''Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature'' 6.1 (Spring 1987): 61-77. *Stevenson, Jane and Peter Davidson (eds), ''Early Modern Women Poets (1520-1700): An Anthology'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press). *Stevenson, Jane, ''Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eighteenth-Century'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mollineux, Mary 1651 births 1696 deaths English Quakers English-language poets Converts to Quakerism English women poets 17th-century English women writers 17th-century English writers