Elizabeth Tollet

Elizabeth Tollet (born March 11, 1694 in England , † February 1, 1754 in Westham , Essex ) was a British mathematician and poet .

life and work

Tollet grew up in the Tower of London , where her father lived as a commissioner for the British Navy. After her mother's death, she took care of her younger siblings and remained unmarried all her life. Her father taught her languages , history , poetry , math, and she was fluent in Latin , Italian and French . She acquired a knowledge of Latin that was unconventional for women of her time. Her family houseguests included Isaac Newton , who also encouraged her to continue her education. Women have been denied access to universities and institutions such as the Royal Society because they were deemed unsuitable. Those who showed their talent were portrayed in satires. Nevertheless, despite their limited educational opportunities, some outstanding women practiced and taught natural philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries. Tollet is interesting not only because of her association with Newton, but also because her life and poetry provided new attitudes and changes to natural philosophy in 18th century England. Poetry was an important didactic medium for spreading Newtonian ideas. She has included Newton and his scientific images in her poems and provides an unusual example for 18th century women engaged in natural philosophy . Sometime after 1720 she moved to her father's Betley Hall country house in Staffordshire , which was a significant house in a large estate. She later moved to Stratford and then to the village of Westham, Essex (now known as West Ham), where she died. She bequeathed to her youngest nephew the sizable fortune that she had inherited from her father and that had presumably given her a comfortable life. Her first poem was published anonymously in 1724 and she was not identified as an author until the late 20th century. A more extensive collection of poems was published under her own name in 1755 and a revised edition in 1970. In 1756 about thirty of her poetic psalms were published by a London bookseller Henry Dell. In 1780, the better-known publisher John Nichols included several of her poems in his poems, including her elegy for Newton written in 1927.

Publications (selection)

Poems on Several Occasions; with Anne Boleyn to King Henry VIII: An epistle. London: John Clarke, 1724, 1755, 1760.
Poems on several occasions. With Anne Boleyn to King Henry VIII. An epistle. By Mrs. Elizabeth Tollet. The second edition, 2010, ISBN 978-1140717294

literature

Moira Ferguson: First Feminists: British Women Writers, 1578-1799; 1985, ISBN 978-0253281203 .
Patricia Fara: Elizabeth Tollet: A New Newtonian Woman, Science History Publications Ltd, 2002.
Paula R. Backscheider : Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre Kindle Edition, ISBN 978-0801881695
Cooper, Thomson (1898) "Tollet, Elizabeth" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 56 London: Smith, Elder, p. 448.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Great, Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British mathematician and poet
DATE OF BIRTH	March 11, 1694
PLACE OF BIRTH	England
DATE OF DEATH	February 1, 1754
Place of death	Westham , Essex