Lady Lucy Hutchinson

Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681) was an English biographer as well as probably the first translator into English of the complete text of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura during the years of the interregnum (1649-1660).[1]

Contents [hide] 1 Biography 2 Bibliography 3 Family 4 References 5 External links

Biography[edit]The daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and Lady Lucy St. John, she married on 3 July 1638 in St. Andrew Holborn, London England to Colonel John Hutchinson, one of those who signed the death-warrant of King Charles I of England, but who afterwards protested against the assumption of supreme power by Oliver Cromwell. She has a place in literature for her biography of her husband Memoirs Of The Life Of Colonel Hutchinson. In the book she records that he had many notable victories in that conflict, including his victory at Shelford Manor on 27 October 1645. In this battle he defeated his kin Colonel Philip Stanhope. Stanhope the fifth son of the Earl of Chesterfield, was killed during the engagement. Lucy writes of this in the book, she may have even seen the battle as Owthorpe was only a few miles away from the battle site. After the English Civil War John Hutchinson retired to his estate of Owthorpe. With the restoration he was arrested but not tried of the regicide of King Charles I for which he was imprisoned in Sandown castle Kent, England. Lucy went before the House of Lords to gain his release, but to no avail.[1]

Bibliography[edit]Memoirs Of The Life Of Colonel Hutchinson throws lights upon the characteristics and conditions of the life of Puritans of good family.[2] Intended for her family only, it was printed by a descendant in 1806, and cleared away many false impressions about the narrowness and austerity of the educated Puritans.

Hutchinson's works included Order and Disorder, possibly the first epic written by a woman in the English language. The work is a verse rendition of the Book of Genesis, offering parallels to John Milton's Paradise Lost. Although only five cantos of the work were published in her lifetime, in 2001 the critic David Norbrook published the work in full.

Hutchinson's verse translation of De Rerum Natura was dedicated to Lord Anglesy, who added the manuscript to his extensive library. The manuscript was sold to the British Library by his heirs in the mid-nineteenth century. It was published for the first time in 1996 under the editorship of Hugh de Quehen.[1] Her title as first English translator of the De Rerum Natura is challenged by an anonymous manuscript prose translation, likely of the same decade, now preserved at Oxford (Bodleian MS Rawl. D.314).

Family[edit]John and Lucy Hutchinson had nine children:

son John Hutchinson, born 1650 in Owthorpe, Notts, England. References[edit]1.^ a b c This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & sons; New York, E. P. Dutton 2.^ Firth, Charles Harding (1891). "Hutchinson, John (1615-1664)". In Sidney Lee. Dictionary of National Biography 28. London: Smith, Elder & Co