Wright, Mehetabel Wesley

(1697-1750)

   Born in Epworth, the seventh of nineteen surviving children of Samuel Wesley, she was sister to John and Charles Wesley (see entry, The Wesley Family). Hetty, as she was generally known, was educated at home and could read Greek at the age of eight. She fell in love with a lawyer, but her father objected to this match. She fell pregnant by an unknown lover and in 1725 was forced into marriage to William Wright, a plumber and glazier of Louth, Lincolnshire, but her baby daughter survived only eight months. John openly disagreed with his father's actions and preached a sermon on the lack of charity. Hetty's mother would only accept her if she "truly repented." The couple had several children, none of whom survived, possibly due to the lead pollution of her husband's trade. He was a heavy drinker and the marriage was not a happy one. She made up with her family, but went to her grave feeling she was a sinner. Some of her poems: "Address to Her Husband," "An Epitaph on Herself," "To an Infant Expiring the Second Day of Its Birth," "Wedlock; A Satire."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Antholog y. Roger Lonsdale, ed. Oxford University Press, 1989. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. Roger Lonsdale, ed. Oxford University Press, 1984. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.