Rachel Speght is best known for
A Mouzell for Melastomus(1617), her contribution to a Jacobean debate about the nature and worth of women. She was most likely born in London. There her Yorkshire-born father, James Speght (d. 1637), was a Calvinistically-inclined minister at Mary Magdalene on Milk Street where the Speght family lived. Little is known about Speght's mother (not even her name) except that she gave birth to two other girls, Sara and Rebecca, and a boy, Samuel, in addition to two children who died in infancy (Speight 2002). After she died in June 1620 Rachel wrote one of her two works
Mortalities Memorandum(1621).
The details of Speght's education are unknown to us but the knowledge she deploys in her writing was atypical of a woman of her time. In the preface to Mortalities
1638 words
Citation: Flood, John. "Rachel Speght". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 October 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4164, accessed 23 November 2024.]
