Mother’s Spiritual Dialogue, Meditations, and Elegies

Mary Carey (c. 1609–c. 1680) was the daughter of Sir John Jackson. She married Pelham Carey in 1630, and later was remarried, to George Payler, though she continued to be known as Lady Carey. Pamela S. Hammons is professor of English and Cooper Fellow at the University of Miami and coeditor of World-Making Renaissance Women: Rethinking Early Modern Women’s Place in Literature and Culture.

• Acknowledgments Illustrations Abbreviations INTRODUCTION A MOTHER’S SPIRITUAL DIALOGUE, MEDITATIONS, AND ELEGIES To My Most Loving and Dearly Beloved Husband, George Payler, Esquire A Dialogue Betwixt the Soul and the Body Note on the Deaths of Five Children Written by My Dear Husband at the Death of Our Fourth (at That Time) Only Child, Robert Payler Written by Me at the Same Time, on the Death of My Fourth and Only Child, Robert Payler Written by Me at the Death of my Fourth Son and Fifth Child, Peregrine Payler A Meditation or Commemoration of the Love of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost A Meditation or Commemoration of the Love of Christ A Meditation or Commemoration of the Love of the Holy Ghost Upon the Sight of My Abortive Birth the 31 of December 1657 APPENDIX 1: MARY CAREY’S LETTER TO THOMAS PELHAM APPENDIX 2: POETIC EXCHANGE BETWEEN MARY CAREY AND THOMAS FAIRFAXBibliography Index

"While Lady Mary Carey’s poetry has been available in small excerpts in anthologies, this is the first attempt to gather her known writings, prose and poetry, in a single authoritative edition—one that establishes that Carey was an active participant in probably more than one coterie network and was conversant with multiple genres of spiritual writing, from mothers’ legacies, elegies, and prayers to conversion narratives and autobiographical meditations. While Carey matches the description of a good/proper early modern woman in the period’s prescriptive writings, her volume also contains robust questioning of male superiority, as well as a poignant challenge to the God who took so many of her children at an early age. Her writings have much to show us about the ways in which literate seventeenth-century Englishwomen navigated patriarchal environments."