Mary Oxlie

alt=First half of Mary Oxlie's poem "To William Drummond of Hawthornden" First half of Mary Oxlie's "To William Drummond of Hawthornden". Poems, by that most famous wit, William Drummond of Hawthornden, Ed. Edward Phillips, 1656, p. xix. alt=Second half of Mary Oxlie's poem "To William Drummond of Hawthornden" Mary Oxlie or Oxley (fl. 1616) was a 17th-century Scottish or Northumbrian poet, known for one surviving published composition, a "literary eulogy or friendship poem".

Life and work Mary Oxlie of Morpeth is credited as the author of a commendatory poem of fifty-two lines, "To William Drummond of Hawthornden," which prefaced Edward Phillips' 1656 edition of Drummond's poems. Phillips was Drummond's brother-in-law.

In 1675, in a section of his Theatrum poetarum called "Women among the moderns eminent for poetry," Phillips describes "Mary Morpeth" as a "Scotch Poetess" who wrote "many other things in Poetry" (p. 259) apart from the dedication, though none of these other poems are now known. The 1656 ascription identifies her as Northumbrian. The original date of the poem is conjectural, though from internal evidence it would seem to have been 1616.

Oxlie's poem was anthologized in 1921 by J. C. Squire in A Book of Women’s Verse and more recently by Germaine Greer in 101 Poems by 101 Women (2001) and Jane Davidson and Peter Stevenson in Early Modern Women Poets (2001).

Etexts Oxlie, Mary, of Morpet. "To William Drummond of Hawthornden". Poems, by that most famous wit, William Drummond of Hawthornden. London, 1656, pp. xix-xx. (Google Books) Oxlie, Mary. "To William Drummond of Hawthornden".The Poems of William Drummond of Hawthornden. Edinburgh, 1832, pp. xiii-iv. (Internet Archive)