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Poems breathed forth by the nobel Hadassas, and The unfortunate Florinda, by Lady Hesther Pulter

Archive Print Item: Manuscripts BC MS Lt q 32 Contains digital media

Details

Type of record: Book

Title: Poems breathed forth by the nobel Hadassas, and The unfortunate Florinda, by Lady Hesther Pulter

Other titles: Unfortunate Florinda

Level: Item

Classmark: Manuscripts BC MS Lt q 32

Creator(s): Pulter, Lady Hester (1605-1678)

Additional creator(s): Madan, Judith (1702-1781) (Other)

Related people: Ley family; Pulter family

Publisher: [publisher not identified]

Publication city: [Place of publication not identified]

Date(s): 1645?-1665

Language: English

Size and medium: 1 volume (168 ff. inscribed of 169 bound) and 17 ff. loose sheets

Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/686715

Printed items catalogue: https://leeds.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?vid=44LEE_INST:VU1&docid=alma991010903399705181

Description

Lady Hesther Pulter was the sixth daughter of James Ley, 1st earl of Marlborough. F.1r bears a note of the author being aged 71 in 1667 and dying March or April 1678 aged 82.


Bound in reversed calf, spine lettered. Poems predominantly in a scribal hand with insertions and revisions in two other hands, one of them apparently Hesther Pulter's.


A collection of poetry, beginning on flyleaf and then on ff.2r-130v; from back, inverted, on f.1r, 2v-36v, is an incomplete prose romance, The Unfortunate Florinda. Detached, previusly inserted matter includes 3 ff. (paginated 3-7) of 62 heroic couplets from Abelard to Eloisa, identified as by Judith Madan, ca.1720; and 3 ff. bearing genealogies, arms and an account of "Ley, Earl of Marleborough".


Purchased at Christie, 8 October 1975 (Lot 353), sold among the property of Sir Gilbert Inglefield.


Selected poems from the manuscript (and a facsimile page) are printed in "Early Modern Women's Manuscript Poetry", ed. Jill Seal Millman and Gillian Wright (Manchester UP, 2005), pp. 111-27.


Indexed in: The poems are indexed in the BCMSV database.

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