Oxlie, Mary

The surviving corpus of Mary Oxlie (fl. 1616) is a single poem, the commendatory verse ‘To William Drummond of Hawthornden’, which appeared in the posthumous edition of Drummond's Poems published in 1656. Drummond (1585–1649), arguably best known today for his account of conversations with Ben Jonson during the latter's 1618 visit to Scotland, was widely held to be the foremost Scots poet of the seventeenth century; it has been speculated that Oxlie, along with other women writers such as Anna Hume, participated in a literary circle centred on Drummond. While Oxlie was referred to as a ‘Scotch Poetess’, there is some confusion about her birthplace, which might have been in the north of England. Indeed, next to nothing is known about her beyond her poem, which was ascribed to ‘Mary Oxlie of Morpet’ in the 1656 Poems, but to ‘Mary Morpeth’ in a 1675 discussion of ‘women among the moderns eminent for poetry’ by John Milton's nephew Edward Phillips, who himself wrote ‘Vpon the incomparable Poems of Mr. William Drummond’ for the 1656 Poems. Phillips also alludes to Oxlie's authorship of other works, but no other trace of any additional verse survives.