ABSTRACT
Lucy Hutchinson’s claim to inclusion in the rank of early modern women poets has been confined to only one original poem and a translation of Lucretius. The poems place Lucy in a new light. In the writings which have hitherto received critical discussion, she adopts personae which play down the fact that a woman is writing. Her longest surviving piece in verse is a translation of Lucretius. Her Memoirs of her husband, Colonel John Hutchinson, are cast in the third person and set individual experiences in the light of a large-scale narrative of English history. There are particularly close connections between the “Elegies” and the opening passage of the Memoirs, with its lengthy encomium of John Hutchinson. The “Elegies” provoke a closer look at the opening of the Memoirs, which have become a much-cited source for readings of Lucy Hutchinson’s self-suppression. Both the “Elegies” and the Memoirs are pervaded by a Christianized version of neoplatonic imagery.
