Martha Moulsworth

Martha Moulsworth (10 November 1577), born Martha Dorsett, was an English writer who spent much of her life in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. Her only known literary work, Memorandum of Martha Moulsworth, Widow, an autobiographical poem, is one of the earliest known autobiographies in English.

Life Moulsworth was likely a landowner, as she alludes in her poem to her father's passing and the fact that he 'had, & left lands of his owne possession'.

Moulsworth was well educated: according to the Memorandum, she learned Latin, and her text evinces a wealth of biblical knowledge. Evans suggests that Moulsworth was a Laudian; he notes in later work, however, that she was godmother to William Prynne, which may seem to cast doubt on this view.

A sermon delivered in honour of Moulsworth's death notes that her academic interests included history and theology.

One puzzle about the Memorandum is Moulsworth's claim that her father taught her Latin. This is impossible, as scholarship has revealed that Moulsworth's father was Robert Dorsett, who died 29 May 1580 —when Moulsworth was not even three years old. Dorsett was an Anglican minister and canon of Christ Church, who graduated Oxford with an MA in 1567 and was a tutor of Robert and Philip Sidney. Depas-Orange suggests that Moulsworth casts her father as her teacher out of a 'desire to emulate her father's achievements'; Evans, due to a 'sense of the need for patriarchal sanction'. The Memorandum was apparently unknown until the 1990s, and published for the first time shortly thereafter.

Other works Steggle argues that a poem titled 'Thou who dost all my earthly thoughts employ', previously attributed to Mary Molesworth Monck (d. 1715) should in fact be attributed to Martha Moulsworth.