Conspiring with ‘friends’: Hester Pulter’s Poetry and the Stanley Family at Cumberlow Green

Since Hester Pulter’s manuscript poems came to light in 1996, critics have been seeking information about the poet’s friends. This article provides information about her neighbours, the Stanley family, whose literary connections read like a ‘who’s who’ of early modern writers, including, among others, the poets Thomas Stanley, Richard Lovelace, William Hammond, Andrew Marvell, Edward Sherburne, and the Sandys family. Positing that Pulter’s poetry influenced the work of Marvell and also perhaps that of Abraham Cowley, this article encourages us to rethink some of our gendered attitudes to female poets’ participation in English and European literary networks.

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