Julie Sampson – författare

Mary, Lady Chudleigh was a confidante of John Dryden and a leading figure amongst the women writers of her day. In many ways a proto-feminist, while still a provincial aristocrat and devout Protestant, Lady Chudleigh's work shows many of the apparent contradictions of the early modern era. This is the only selection of her work available in paperback.

Tessitura, Italian 'texture', borrows a musical conceptual term, denoting the textural sweep of melodic contour-kind of safe-space-for a singer or instrumentalist. This collection is intended as a corresponding writerly-space in which I bring together various drifts of work, assemble them into poetry's visual equivalence of music's soundscape. The poems are grounded-and sometimes take flight from-my comfort-zone roots in the South-West of England-its continuity of personal ancestors and especially its successive memory chain of often forgotten women writers, several of whom make their presence known in the central sequence 'Devon women; Lost W/rites'.