Martha Moulsworth (10 November 1577 – c. 28 October 1646), born Martha Dorsett, was an English writer who spent much of her life in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire.^[1][2] Her only known literary work,^[a] Memorandum of Martha Moulsworth, Widow (1632), an autobiographical poem, is one of the earliest known autobiographies in English.^[3][4]

Life

Moulsworth was likely a landowner, as she alludes in her poem to her father's passing and the fact that he 'had, & left lands of his owne possession'.^[5]

Moulsworth was well educated: according to the Memorandum, she learned Latin,^[6] and her text evinces a wealth of biblical knowledge.^[7] Evans suggests that Moulsworth was a Laudian;^[4] he notes in later work, however, that she was godmother to William Prynne, which may seem to cast doubt on this view.^[8]

A sermon delivered in honour of Moulsworth's death notes that her academic interests included history and theology.^[1] Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson argue that '[h]er poem suggests a life of reading and thinking about religious issues, and is in the tradition of spiritual autobiography'.^[9]

One puzzle about the Memorandum is Moulsworth's claim that her father taught her Latin. This is impossible, as scholarship has revealed that Moulsworth's father was Robert Dorsett, who died 29 May 1580^[10]—when Moulsworth was not even three years old.^[11] Dorsett was an Anglican minister and canon of Christ Church,^[12][11] who graduated Oxford with an MA in 1567^[13] and was a tutor of Robert and Philip Sidney.^[14][15] Depas-Orange suggests that Moulsworth casts her father as her teacher out of a 'desire to emulate her father's achievements'; Evans, due to a 'sense of the need for patriarchal sanction'.^[1]

Moulsworth was widowed three times; her favourite husband, Bevill Moulsworth, was her last.^[16] Bevill was a goldsmith, merchant, and member of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.^[17]

Works

Moulsworth is known to have written only one work—the Memorandum (1632)—but Steggle has argued that another poem should be attributed to her.

Memorandum

Moulsworth wrote her Memorandum on 10 November 1632, on the occasion of her 55th birthday.^[6] At 110 lines, it assigns one couplet to each year of her life.^[18]

Wilcox and Evans have drawn particular attention to a passage of the Memorandum in which Moulsworth explains her notably progressive views on women's education.^[16][19] The passage, with a transcription in modern English, is as follows:^[20]

Post distinguishes Moulsworth from contemporaries including Lady Mary Wroth and Emilia Lanier, noting that while Wroth and Lanier wrote with the concerns and pressures of courtly life in mind, Moulsworth had other preoccupations: '[f]or both Anne Bradstreet and Martha Moulsworth', he writes, 'it is not the court or the patronage system that motivates their poetry ... [I]t is the circumstantial relationship with other members of their family that lies at the core of their poetry'.^[21] Wilcox compares the Memorandum to the Devotions of John Donne (1624), published two years after the Memorandum was written.^[18]

There is only one known copy of the Memorandum, which is included in a commonplace book at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library that belonged to Marmaduke Rawdon (1610–1669).^[4][22] The Memorandum was apparently unknown until the 1990s, and published for the first time shortly thereafter.^[18]

Other works

Steggle argues that a poem titled 'Thou who dost all my earthly thoughts employ', previously attributed to Mary Molesworth Monck (d. 1715) should in fact be attributed to Martha Moulsworth.^[23]