Mary Chudleigh was part of an intellectual circle that included Mary Astell

Mary Astell

Mary Astell was an English feminist writer and rhetorician. Her advocacy of equal educational opportunities for women has earned her the title "the first English feminist."-Life and career:...

, Elizabeth Thomas

Elizabeth Thomas (poet)

Elizabeth Thomas , poet, was born in London, the only child of Elizabeth Osborne , aged 16, and lawyer Emmanuel Thomas , aged 60. Her father died when she was an infant and she and her mother faced financial hardship. She was educated at home, was well read, and learnt some French and Latin...

, Judith Drake

Judith Drake

Judith Drake was an English intellectual and author who was active in the last decade of the 17th century. She was part of a circle of intellectuals, authors, and philosophers which included Mary Astell, Lady Mary Chudleigh, Elizabeth Thomas, Elizabeth Elstob, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and John...

, Elizabeth Elstob

Elizabeth Elstob

Elizabeth Elstob , the 'Saxon Nymph,' was born and brought up in the Quayside area of Newcastle upon Tyne, and, like Mary Astell of Newcastle, is nowadays regarded as one of the first English feminists...

, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

The Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat and writer. Montagu is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from Turkey, as wife to the British ambassador, which have been described by Billie Melman as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about...

, and John Norris. In her later years, she published a book of poetry and two books of essays, all dealing with feminist themes; two of her books went through four editions during the last ten years of her life. Her poetry about human relationships and reactions has been anthologized ever since, and her feminist essays are still being reprinted.

Personal life

Mary, the daughter of Richard Lee, was born in August of 1656, in Winslade in the county of Devon, England. While she, like most women of her time, received little in the way of formal education, she read widely and educated herself in theology, science, and philosophy.

She married Sir George Chudleigh of Ashton, also in Devon. Her biographers argue as to whether their marriage was happy; her references to marriage as a trap that was psychologically stifling for women suggest that she may have had personal experience with an overbearing
husband, but on the other hand, he did allow her to publish several feminist works during his lifetime, and her previously-unpublished work was saved carefully by the family after her death. They had at least three children: Eliza Maria, George (later the next
Sir George), Thomas, and possibly others.

Little else is known about her life except for the fact that her daughter must have died young, as her grief is mentioned in her letters and some poetry. Mary Chudleigh died in 1710.

Individual works

• The Ladies' Defence
  The Ladies' Defence
  The Ladies' Defence, Or, a Dialogue Between Sir John Brute, Sir William Loveall, Melissa, and a Parson, is an essay in verse published by Lady Mary Chudleigh in 1701. The piece was written in response to a wedding sermon, The Bride-Woman's Counselor, published by the minister John Sprint in 1700...
  
  , Or, a Dialogue Between Sir John Brute, Sir William Loveall, Melissa, and a Parson (London, 1701)
• Poems on Several Occasions
  Poems on Several Occasions (Lady Mary Chudleigh)
  Poems on Several Occasions was published by the intellectual feminist Lady Mary Chudleigh in 1703. The primary subject of the collection is the joys of friendship between women, when that friendship is based on shared morals and shared intellectual pursuits, although there are also poems on...
  
   (London, 1703)
• Essays Upon Several Subjects (London, 1710)

Both essay response to a weddi, published by the minister John Sprint in 1700. The sermon makes the point that the wife's only duty is to. "Lady Mary Chudleigh." The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 161. Chudleigh took this as an example that men's negative expectations of women perpetuated the cycle of ignorance. Believing women were capable of also holding intellectual interests but were inhibited by these low expectations, she asked men why they blamed women for their state of weakness—when that is how men trained women to be. Her essays advocate for increased education for women, and call attention to the psychological abuses that often happened when women, if as totally obedient as Sprint advised, were little more than servants within the family.

The primary subject in her book of poetry is the joys of friendship between women, when that friendship is based on shared morals and shared intellectual pursuits, although there are poems on various other topics.

Collected works

• The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh, ed. Margaret J.M. Ezell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Correspondence

• Elizabeth Thomas
  Elizabeth Thomas (poet)
  Elizabeth Thomas , poet, was born in London, the only child of Elizabeth Osborne , aged 16, and lawyer Emmanuel Thomas , aged 60. Her father died when she was an infant and she and her mother faced financial hardship. She was educated at home, was well read, and learnt some French and Latin...
  
  , Pylades and Corinna (London, 1731).
• The Poetical Works of Philip Late Duke of Wharton (London, 1731).
• British Library MSS Stowe 223, f. 398.
• British Library MSS Stowe 224, f. 1.

Biographies

• George Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain who have been Celebrated for their Writings or Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts and Sciences, ed. Ruth Perry (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1985).

Anthologies

• Norton Anthology of Literature by Women
  Norton Anthology of Literature by Women
  The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English, published by W. W. Norton & Company, is one of the Norton Anthology series for use in English literary studies. It is edited by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar...
  
  : The Traditions in English, Sandra Gilbert
  Sandra Gilbert
  Sandra M. Gilbert , Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis, is an influential literary critic and poet who has published widely in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism...
  
   and Susan Gubar
  Susan Gubar
  Dr. Susan D. Gubar is an American academic and Distinguished Professor of English and Women's Studies at Indiana University. She is co-author with Dr. Sandra M. Gilbert of the standard feminist text, The Madwoman in the Attic and a trilogy on women's writing in the twentieth century.Her book...
  
  , eds.
• The First Feminists: British Women Writers, Moira Fergusson, ed., (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
• Eighteenth-Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology, Roger Lonsdale, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
• British Literature: An Anthology, Robert DeMaria, Jr., ed. (London: Blackwell, 1996).

External links

• Essays by Mary Chudleigh at Quotidiana.org