Mehetabel Wright

Mehetabel Wesley Wright (nicknames "Hetty" and "Kitty"; 1697 – 21 March 1750) was an English poet. She was a member of the influential religious Wesley family.

Early life Born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, Wright was the daughter of Samuel Wesley, an Anglican clergyman and poet and his wife Susanna Wesley (née Annesley). Wright was one of 19 children born to Samuel and Susanna Wesley, of whom at least nine died in infancy. Her siblings included younger brothers John Wesley and Charles Wesley, leaders of the Methodist movement, as well as an elder brother Samuel Wesley the Younger, who was a poet and a Church of England cleric. Emilia, Susanna, Mary, Anne, Martha, and Kezia were sisters. Nicknamed "Hetty", and called "Kitty" by her brother Samuel, Wright had a good education, and reportedly was able to read the Greek Testament at the age of eight. She was said to be witty and to have a good sense of humour.

Her uncle Matthew gave her a small marriage dowry. Mr. Wright set up business for himself. Mehetabel gave birth to a baby in February 1726 but the child only lived until December.

For several years before her death, she was in a very infirm state of health, and could not write easily. Poems such as "A Farewell to the World" and "An Epitaph on Herself" prefigure her own death.

Legacy Wright did not publish her poems personally, but they were circulated among her family and others during and after her lifetime. Others were published in different collections, as well as in the Poetical Register, the Christian Magazine, and the Arminian Magazine. Wright's Address to her Dying Infant, composed during her confinement, is noted for its tenderness and highly polished phrasing, while tinged with the gloom which accompanied her marriage.

The regard that Wright was given can be judged by a letter written by the celebrity novelist Samuel Richardson in 1750 (or 1754). Here, he attempted to list women of his time who were "moral examples of their sex". This was not an exhaustive list and although Richardson included Wright, he did not include every gifted woman he knew. John Duncombe circulated some of her poems in the 1750s, and included her approvingly in The Feminead; or, Female Genius (1754).

In 1903, the prolific novelist Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch published a historical novel titled "Hetty Wesley" which was based on the life of Wright.