Mary Mollineux
Mary Mollineux (born Mary Southworth, 1651–1696) was a Quaker poet who differed from many of her Quaker contemporaries because of an early education in Latin, Greek, science, and arithmetic. Probably the daughter of Catholic parents who converted to Quakerism, she met her husband Henry Mollineux (died 1719), who wrote Quaker tracts, while they were both imprisoned in Lancaster Castle in 1684 for attending Quaker meetings. Her husband was imprisoned again in 1690 for refusing to pay tythes to the Church of England and Mary petitioned for his release.
Also recorded as Mary Southworth
Mary Mollineux
- Full name
- Mary Southworth.
- Born
- 1651
- Nationality
- Kingdom of England
- Occupation
- poet · writer
- Languages
- English
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The Fruits of Retirement (1702) was posthumously published. The book is a compilation of Mollineux's manuscript poetry put together by her cousin Frances Owen and printed by the female Quaker publisher Tace Sowle. It went through six editions in the 18th century. The poems blend erudition with activism and also develop literary constructions about exile, retreat, and retirement more typical of Katherine Philips and (later) Anne Finch than of Quaker polemicists. Owen was inspired to collect them, he said, because they would work in service of Quakerism. They are largely biblical in inspiration, but there are hints of her classical education therein, particularly in her composition of Latin elegiac couplets. The first, 'The Fall of Man', is dated 1663. 'A Meditation' (1668), for example, expands on verses from the Book of Lamentations to draw a comparison with the dire situation of Dissenters at that time.
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The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Mary Mollineux, revision 1350224536 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
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These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 2004-09-23. 10.1093/ref:odnb/45818. 2025-12-26.
- 2.Ariane Viktoria. Fichtl. The “Woman’s Seed”: Immediate Abolitionism’s Intellectual Mothers. Modern Intellectual History. 1–21. 2025-10-28. 1479-2443. 1479-2451. 10.1017/S1479244325100231. 2025-12-26.
- 3.harvsp Achinstein 2003 p=81 .
Bibliography printed in the source article · 8
- Literature and dissent in Milton's England. Cambridge University Press. 2003.
- Sharon. Achinstein. Romance of the Spirit: Female Sexuality and Religious Desire in Early Modern England. ELH. 69. 413–438. 2002. 0013-8304. 2025-12-26.
- Poems Between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship, and Desire. Columbia University Press. 1997. 978-0-231-10924-6.
- Social Authorship and the Advent of Print. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999. 978-0-8018-6139-0.
- Writing Women's Literary History. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1996-11-08. 978-0-8018-5508-5.
- Mary Anne. Schofield. "Womens Speaking Justified": The Feminine Quaker Voice, 1662-1797. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 61–77. printemps 1987. 0732-7730. 10.2307/464160. 2025-12-26.
- Early Modern Women Poets (1520-1700): An Anthology. Oxford University Press. 2001. 978-0-19-924257-3.
- Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. Oxford University Press. 2005. 978-0-19-818502-4.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 31 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,529 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Mary McCarthyAuthor
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- Mary McDonaghAuthor
- Mary MidgleyAuthor
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- Mary Morison WebsterAuthor
- Mary OliverAuthor
- Mary Parker FollettAuthor
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