Lady Hester Pulter

Lady Hester Pulter (née Ley) (1605–1678) was a seventeenth-century writer of poetry and prose, whose manuscript was rediscovered in 1996 in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

Calculations based on dates referenced in Pulter's poetry produced conflicting results, and material evidence from the historical record was scarce.

In 1620, at the age of fifteen, Hester married Arthur Pulter and proceeded to spend much of her life at his estate, Broadfield Hall, near Cottered in Hertfordshire.

Although Arthur Pulter worked as a justice of the peace, militia captain, and sheriff, he withdrew from these public positions during the English Civil Wars.

[7] Annotations found in the Leeds manuscript indicate that some later readers did encounter Pulter’s writing, but her poems were not published in her lifetime (as was common for many early modern writers, including Philip Sidney, John Donne, and George Herbert).

[5][17] Following the discovery of Pulter’s manuscript in the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds, her work has been increasingly recognized by scholars as a significant contribution to early modern literature.

In the mid-1990s, scholar Mark Robson discovered the only known copy of Pulter's writing, a leather-bound manuscript held in the University of Leeds Brotherton Library.

These poems address an expansive range of subjects including maternal loss, regicide, the civil war, the transformation of the body after death, astronomy, and the diversity of the natural world.

The romance has interested scholars for its description of resistance in the face of sexual violence and its innovative retelling of the overthrow of Christian Spain in the eighth century.

[22] The narrative turns from the primary storyline to focus on Fidelia, Zabra's companion who was in Africa all this time, who arrives unexpectedly and tells her own story of adventure.

Tamara Mahadin points out that Pulter engaged Copernican cosmology, as seen in the beginning of her poem "A Solitary Complaint" with the lines, "Whenas those vast and glorious globes above / Eternally in treble motions move.

[26][27] Leah Knight and Wendy Wall explain that in "The Revolution," Pulter's fascination with the reuse of her physical body in the heavens suggests the development of an intricate cosmology.