Wharton, Anne

Despite her relatively small literary output, Anne Wharton’s (1659–1685) texts constitute a striking example of what might be considered life writing in the Restoration period. Wharton’s recovered works, twenty-four poems and one play, Love’s Martyr, or Witt Above Crowns: A Tragedy (1679–1681), include elegies, classical and biblical paraphrases, verse epistles, and meditative occasional poems. Much of her poetry contains candid expressions of her chronic physical and mental suffering that marked her adult life.