Jane Colman Turell

Jane Colman Turell (1703–1735) was an 18th-century American colonial poet. She was the first of a number of prolific women poets whose works were published in the colonies.^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[3] Turrell's contemporaries were Francis Knapp, Benjamin Colman, Roger Wolcott, Mather Byles, and Rev. John Adams.^[4]

Turell died at the age of 27. 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,^[5] as Reliquiate Turellae et Lachrymae Paternal, and reprinted in 1741 as Memoirs of the Life and Death of the Pious and Ingenious Mrs. Jane Turell.^[6]

References

1. Tierney, Helen (1 January 1999). Women's Studies Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 1092–. ISBN 978-0-313-31072-0.
2. Sears, Edward Isidore; Gorton, David Allyn; Woodman, Charles H. (1871). The National Quarterly Review (Public domain ed.). Pudney & Russell. pp. 335–.
3. Bigold, Melanie (12 January 2013). Women of Letters, Manuscript Circulation, and Print Afterlives in the Eighteenth Century: Elizabeth Rowe, Catharine Cockburn and Elizabeth Carter. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 89–. ISBN 978-1-137-03357-4.
4. Bronson, Walter Cochrane (1919). A short history of American literature (Public domain ed.). Heath. pp. 37–.
5. May, Caroline (1854). The American Female Poets: With Biographical and Critical Notices (Public domain ed.). Lindsay & Blakiston. pp. 171–.
6. Davis, Cynthia J.; West, Kathryn (28 March 1996). Women Writers in the United States. Oxford University Press. pp. 18–. ISBN 978-0-19-535812-4.