Jane Colman Turell (1708–1735) was an 18th-century
American colonial poet. A gifted young scholar, her father provided an unusually good education for a young woman of this period.[1] She was the first of a number of prolific women poets whose works were published in the colonies.[2] Born in
Boston, she was the only daughter of Dr.
Benjamin Colman, a clergyman and writer. Encouraged by her father to follow literary pursuits, she started writing poetry at the age of 11.[3] At the age of 19, she married Rev. Ebenezer Turell of
Medford, Massachusetts. A writer of "classic" poetry focused primarily on religion and family life, she modeled her life and writings after
Elizabeth Singer Rowe.[4] Turrell's contemporaries were Francis Knapp, Benjamin Colman, Roger Wolcott,
Mather Byles, and Rev. John Adams.[5]
Turell died at the age of 27. She wrote about her experience with childbirth, which included stillbirth, early death of her infants, and painful occurrences.[1] Her letters, diary extracts, short religious essays and pious verse were collected in a pamphlet and published by her husband immediately after her death in 1735,[6] as Reliquiate Turellae et Lachrymae Paternal,[7] and reprinted in 1741 as Memoirs of the Life and Death of the Pious and Ingenious Mrs. Jane Turell.[8]
References
^
abLepore, Jill (2014). Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. Vintage; Illustrated edition.
ISBN978-0307948830.
^Sears, Edward Isidore; Gorton, David Allyn; Woodman, Charles H. (1871).
The National Quarterly Review (Public domain ed.). Pudney & Russell. pp.
335–.