space.template.Creative

Biography/Bibliogrph

= =
 * Rachel Speght was born sometime in 1597 to a bourgeois London household, but her death is unknown, which is probably based on the fact that little information about her life has been researched and recorded.
 * There is nothing known about Rachel Speght's mother except that she died shortly after Rachel published her polemic in 1617 because Rachel describes her death in "The Dreame," prefixed to Mortalities Memorandum. Also, less than one month after the dream vision was entered in the Stationers' Register, her father married Elizabeth Smith.
 * Her father’s name was James Speght who was a Calvinist rector of two churches in London, St. Mary Magdalene in Milkstreet, from 1592 to 1637, and St. Clement in Eastcheap, from 1611 to 1637. He also graduated doctor of divinity from Christ's College, Cambridge, and was ordained in May 1591. He died early in May 1637.
 * Another importance influence in Speght’s life is her godmother Mary Moundford who was the wife of the eminent physician, Thomas Moundford because Speght dedicated Mortalities Memorandum to her godmother.
 * Rachel Speght was a pamphleteer, poet, and an important voice in the gender polemics of the early seventeenth century.
 * She was the also “the first self-proclaimed and positively identified female polemicist in England” (61).
 * Whether Rachel Speght had a formal education is not known, but she was certaintly educated because her works demonstrate familiarity not only with the Bible, but also with Latin and a host of classical and contemporary philosophers and poets. She was also well connected socially.
 * Also, Speght displayed that she had some training in logic and rhetoric because of her writing style although training and rhetoric during the Renaissance usually meant learning various stylistic schemes and tropes and it was a subject usually reserved for men.
 * Rachel Speght married William Procter, a 29 year old clerk, on August 2, 1621 at the age of 24 at St. Mary Woolchurch instead of at her father’s church, but according to a biographical note in Kissing the Rod r father’s consent. The couple christened a daughter, Rachel, in February 1626 and a son, William, in December 1630. (1988), the wedding did have he