Ann Countess of Coventry

The title-page continues: The Pilgrim's Viaticum; or, The Destitute, but not Forlorn, Being a Divine Poem, Digested from Meditations upon the Holy Scripture. The title-page quotes Psalm 119, about loving God's law. This...

ET had Lady Coventry as a patron. A number of literary men wrote prefatory verses for her book, but the only identifiable one with an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Joseph Perkins

Her closest friends were the unmarried Lady Betty Hastings and Lady Catherine Jones , and the widow Lady Coventry . Lady Betty was a wealthy woman celebrated for her piety, intellectual accomplishments, and benefactions...

SD reveals her gender in her preface merely by her use of pronouns. Her motive for publishing was a dire need of money. An unnamed benefactor in her family supplied the need, but she decided...

Astell was not above accepting financial help from her upper-class circle. Lady Betty Hastings regularly paid her sums of money in her later years, and Lady Catherine Jones , Lady Coventry , and Elizabeth Hutcheson