Judith Madan

Life and career She was the only daughter of Spencer Cowper, lawyer, judge (Justice of the Common Pleas), and member of Parliament, Cowper and Pope corresponded until at least 1723 and in his letters he took an interest in her poetry, sometimes setting her literary projects, apparently as a salve or preventive to the depression from which Cowper periodically suffered. Cowper seems to have written little following her marriage.

On 7 December 1723 Cowper married Colonel Martin Madan, Their younger daughter, Penelope (died 22 December 1805), became the wife of General Sir Alexander Maitland (1728–1820). Judith was the aunt of William Cowper the English poet and hymnodist, and grandmother of General Frederick Maitland.

She died at Stafford Row, Westminster on 7 December 1781.

Works Abelard to Eloisa, written 1720, published in 1728 in William Pattison's Poetical Works and thereby misattributed to him initially The Progress of Poetry (1721) Verses on the Death of Mr. Hughes, works in honour of the poet John Hughes, written 1719-1730