Elizabeth Tollet (1694-1754). Courtesy History Today.
Elizabeth Tollet (1694 -1 February 1754) was an English poet.
Life[]
Youth and education[]
Tollet was the daughter, and the eldest of 3 surviving children,[1] of George Tollet, commissioner of the navy in the reigns of William III and Anne.[2]
Her mother died before she was 10.[1]
From 1702 to 1714, her father served as extra commissioner of the navy, and the family resided in the Tower of London.[1]
Adult life[]
Tollet, who never married, later moved to her father’s country home Betley Hall in Staffordshire.[1] She later lived at Stratford and West Ham.[2] She lived much of her life with a kindly brother, an antiquarian who is always described as having gone to Cambridge.
Tollet was a learned woman,[3] and knew Sir Isaac Newton, who praised some of her earliest essays.[2]
She was disabled, described as a “little crooked woman.”[3]
She died at West Ham on 1 February 1754.[2]
Writing[]
Tollet was the author of Poems on Several Occasions; with Anne Boleyn to King Henry VIII: An epistle.[2] The volume was published in 1724, and an expanded version appeared the year after her death. The book contains "Hypatia," now considered an early feminist poem, which opens, "What cruel laws depress the female kind".[4] It also contains a musical drama titled "Susanna; or Innocence preserved," and some competent Latin verse.[2]
Recognition[]
The best of her English poems are reprinted in Nichols's Collection, vi. 64; and "Winter Song" and "On a Death's Head" are in Frederic Rowton's Female Poets of Great Britain, 1848.[2]
Publications[]
- Poems on Several Occasions; with Anne Boleyn to King Henry VIII: An epistle. London: John Clarke, 1724, 1755, 1760.[5]
See also[]
References[]
Cooper, Thomson (1898) "Tollet, Elizabeth" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 56 London: Smith, Elder, p. 448. Wikisource, Web, Jan. 17, 2020.
Notes[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Patricia Fara, Elizabeth Tollett and Her Scientific Sisters, History Today 59:4 (April 2009). Web, Apr. 25, 2021.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Cooper, 448.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Foremother Poet: Elizabeth Tollett (1694-1754)," Ellen and Jim Have a Blog, Two, March 21, 2011. Wordpress, Web, Jan. 17, 2020.
- ↑ Paula R. Backscheider, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry (JHU Press, 2005), 411. Google Books, Web, Jan. 18, 2020.
- ↑ Search results = au:Elizabeth Tollet, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Jan. 17, 2020.
External links[]
- Poems
- "Winter Song"
- "On the Prospect from Westminster Bridge"
- Elizabeth Tollet at PoemHunter (2 poems)
- Elizabeth Tollet at AllPoetry (2 poems)
- Books
- Elizabeth Tollet at Amazon.com
- About
- Foremother Poet: Elizabeth Tollett (1694-1754)
- "Elizabeth Tollet and Her Scientific Sisters" at History Today
- "Elizabeth Tollet: A new Newtonian woman" at NASA/ADS
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Tollet, Elizabeth
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