Elizabeth Tollet (1694–1754)

Details about the early life of Elizabeth Tollet are scarce. She was a daughter of George Tollet, an affluent gentleman of Betley Hall, Staffordshire, who held a series of state administrative posts in Dublin and London. Recognizing her intelligence, he gave her an excellent education in Latin, Italian, French, history, poetry, and mathematics. Through his job as a Commissioner of the Navy, he obtained a residence at the Tower of London, which is probably where Elizabeth first met Sir Isaac Newton, when he was employed by the Mint. He became her friend and encouraged her to write. She became interested in Newtonian principles and used scientific imagery in some of her poetry. In the poem “To my Brother at St. John's College in Cambridge,” she described how she read classics such as the works of Cicero until nightfall and then exercised by walking around the walls and ancient turrets of the Tower, admiring the views over the Thames. In 1724, she published her first work, Poems on Several Occasions, anonymously. It included "Hypatia," a brilliant feminist defense of higher education for women. She wrote a number of elegies for lost friends, including "On the Death of Sir Isaac Newton" in 1727. A larger collection of her poems, some in Latin, appeared under her own name in 1755, the year after she died at age 60. Her work included pastoral, religious, and philosophical poetry, psalms, epigrams, and some translations of classical works. She never married and lived quietly in Stratford and Westham in Essex, and amassed a substantial library.