My Name was Martha

Buried away in a commonplace book held by the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the manuscript of this work was serendipitously discovered last year and is here brought into print for the first time. Entitled "The Memorandum of Martha Moulsworth / Widdowe," its features include these:. The poem is one of the first autobiographical works (per se) by anyone in English, and it is certainly one of the first autobiographical poems. The fact that it is by a woman, of course, adds to its importance.