Mehetabel Wesley Wright

Mehetabel Wesley Wright (nicknames, "Hetty" and "Kitty"; 1697 – 21 March 1750) was an English poet. She was a member of the influential religious Wesley family.

Born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, Wright was the daughter of Samuel Wesley, an Anglican clergyman and poet and his wife Susanna Wesley (née Annesley). Wright was one of 19 children born to Samuel and Susanna Wesley, of whom at least nine died in infancy. Her siblings included younger brothers John Wesley and Charles Wesley, leaders of the Methodist movement, as well as an elder brother Samuel Wesley the Younger, who was a poet and a Church of England cleric. Emilia, Susanna, Mary, Anne, Martha, and Kezia were sisters. Nicknamed "Hetty", and called "Kitty" by her brother Samuel, Wright had a good education, and reportedly was able to read the Greek Testament at the age of eight. She was said to be witty and to have a good sense of humour.

As she grew Mehetabel had many admirers: but they were generally considered ill-suited by her family. When Wesley was about 27 years old, she was prevented from marrying a man whom her father called "an unprincipled lawyer." During 1725 she eloped twice, returning pregnant. Shortly after, she had an "offer of marriage" from a man named William Wright of Louth at Haxey, a journeyman plumber and glazier. Her father urged her to marry Wright, and she did so, on October 13, 1725, in what has been modernly described as a "shotgun marriage to a man who was her social and intellectual inferior".

Her uncle Matthew gave her a small marriage dowry. Mr. Wright set up business for himself. Mehetabel gave birth to a baby in February 1726 but the child only lived until December. She found her husband to be unsuited to her in all respects, indicating in a letter of 1729 that her marriage lacked "a mutual affection and desire of pleasing, something near an equality of mind and person, either earthly or heavenly wisdom, and anything to keep love warm between a young couple".

Wright's relationship with her father never recovered. Her younger brother, John, had mentioned his sister's poor treatment by their father in 1726 in his sermons and their father no longer recognised her as his daughter. Her brother Samuel bitterly chastised her in verse in "A Full Answer" in response to her poem "Wedlock: A Satire", declaring that "cursing wedlock is blaspheming".

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