The Works of Lucy Hutchinson

This volume, consisting mainly of writings from 1667 onwards, opens up a startlingly different world from that of the Lucretius translation. Here Lucy Hutchinson engages with the development of Reformed theology, from Calvin’s Institutes through to the High Calvinism of the mid-seventeenth century. The writings are fascinating case studies in the history of reading, showing how Hutchinson formed her own views through careful and critical engagement with treatises and sermons, and mediated between scholarly communities and a vernacular audience. On the Principles of the Christian Religion was addressed to her daughter, but offers an unusual theological rigour to the normal subject-matter of mother-daughter treatises. On Theology, long thought to have been an original composition, was a translation from a Latin theological treatise by John Owen (1616-83), but involved a process of careful streamlining of a rather diffuse work to clarify its theological polemics, and shows her characteristic force and concision as a writer. These works have received hardly any attention because the particular stratum of Calvinist theology they represent has until recently been neglected save by a small number of specialists; the commentaries explicate their arguments and terminology and relate them to Hutchinson’s other writings.

1. General Introduction: David Norbrook.
2. Selections from the theological notebook (DD/HU3), ed. David Norbrook. The main texts are `My owne faith and attainment’ (1667) and `A breife summe of what I belieue’ (1668). These are important spiritual testaments. The manuscript of her theological notebook also includes some briefer notes, on the authority of scripture and other topics – including an interesting assessment of her relationship to Calvin – and a translation from the Latin text of Calvin’s Institutes.
3. Treatise on theology addressed to her daughter, Barbara Orgill, ed.with an introduction by Elizabeth Clarke. This was published in 1817 as On the Principles of the Christian Religion, addressed to her Daughter; and on Theology. The  commentary brings out this treatises’s argumentative force and intellectual independence.
4. A translation of part of John Owen, Theologoumena Pantodapa, ed. with an introduction by Jane Stevenson. The text was printed in 1817 as the second part of On the Principles of the Christian Religion, addressed to her Daughter; and on Theology. The manuscript is now lost, but the text of the treatise to Barbara Orgill can now be seen to have been fairly accurately transcribed and the 1817 edition is taken as copy-text. The commentary notes linguistic points in Hutchinson’s translation, showing that on many points it compares very favourably with the only modern translation of Owen’s text, and demonstrates connections with her other writings.

In Preparation

'The Life of John Hutchinson' and Other Life Writings

Edited by David Norbrook with Martyn Bennett, Jonathan Gibson, and Anna Wall.

1. Civil War notebook (‘Defence of John Huthinson’. This is normally described as a draft for the Memoirs, but it was written twenty years earlier under very different circumstances, documenting John Hutchinson’s actions at a time when he was under severe criticism from political opponents. Though Lucy Hutchinson cannibalized this manuscript when she came to writing her life of her husband after his death, it deserves to be considered as an independent text, and the variations in language and content are far too great to be represented in an editorial apparatus. C. H. Firth published extracts in his editions of 1885 and 1906 but some parts of the MS had then been lost; this edition will publish the entire surviving manuscript for the first time.
2. Lucy Hutchinson’s autobiography. This fragment was published in 1806 along with the Memoirs. Regrettably, the manuscript, which also contained some poems, has now vanished. Despite extensive interest in early modern women’s autobiography, this brief but rich and complex text has never been properly analyzed or glossed; notes will bring to bear new biographical information while the introduction will offer a new interpretation of the text’s date and circumstances.
3. The work traditionally known as Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, though it will here be given Lucy Hutchinson’s own title, ‘The Life of John Hutchinson’. Since its publication in 1806, this work has been established as a classic of seventeenth-century prose, an illuminating study of the Civil War at local and national levels, and a moving love story. Remarkably little curiosity has been shown about how this work came into being: how did such compelling prose emerge as if from nowhere? What personal, political and religious agendas was its author pursuing? Even at the most basic level of source-material, little independent scrutiny has been given to many events for which this work remains the only evidence. Now that we know more of Lucy Hutchinson’s life and writings, it is possible to place the Memoirs much more precisely within the overall development of her career as a writer. This edition will be printed from the manuscript (now Nottingham City Museums and Galleries NCM1922-71, currently on display in Nottingham Castle). It will be the first edition to represent the manuscript diplomatically so that readers can follow Hutchinson’s processes of composition, and supply some previously unpublished passages. These will include fifty pages of biblical quotations which John Hutchinson had marked in his Bible and which Lucy Hutchinson rearranged under themes, making her husband’s scriptural reading, as framed by his wife, part of the legacy he left to his children. The edition will contain full annotation of the many historical and personal references which previous editions have glossed only imperfectly, and of Hutchinson’s use of source-materials such as May’s History of Parliament.
4. Letters. These are few in number but full of biographical interest.

Poems