Lucy Hutchinson (; 29 January 1620 – October 1681) was an English translator, poet, and biographer, and the first person to translate the complete text of Lucretius's De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) into English verse, during the years of the Interregnum (1649–1660).
Biography
Lucy Apsley was born on 29 January 1620 in the Tower of London, where her father, Sir Allen Apsley, was Lieutenant. She was named after her mother, Lady Lucy St John, and was the second of ten children.
Lucy was married on 3 July 1638 in St. Andrew Holborn to Colonel John Hutchinson (1615–1664). She claimed that he was in part attracted to her intellectual and poetic accomplishments. In 1649, John Hutchinson was one of the signatories of King Charles's death-warrant, but he later protested against the assumption of supreme power by Oliver Cromwell.
After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, her husband was arrested for his part in the regicide and imprisoned in Sandown Castle, Kent. However, he was not tried. Lucy went before the House of Lords to gain his release, but to no avail. In 1664, John Hutchinson died in prison. Intended for her family only, it was printed by a descendant in 1806, and became a popular and influential account of that period. Her title as first English translator of the De Rerum Natura is challenged by an anonymous manuscript prose translation, likely of the same decade, now preserved at Oxford (Bodleian MS Rawl. D.314). Hutchinson's translation was published for the first time in 1996 under the editorship of Hugh de Quehen.
Poetry
A series of original poems by Hutchinson was re-discovered in a manuscript in the Nottinghamshire Archives (DD/Hu 2) by David Norbrook. This work is likely contemporaneous in composition with the Memoirs. These poems were unpublished in her lifetime and the manuscript, which is not in her hand, has no dedication.
Hutchinson's other works included Order and Disorder, arguably the first epic poem written by a woman in the English language. The work is a verse paraphrase of the Book of Genesis, offering parallels to John Milton's Paradise Lost. Only five cantos of the work were published during her lifetime, in 1679. In 2001 the critic David Norbrook published the work in full; he considers it to have been written after the translation of De rerum natura and roughly parallel to when Milton is thought to have written Paradise Lost (1660–1664). Hutchinson also wrote On the Principles of the Christian Religion, an articulation of the Puritan beliefs of herself and her husband. It was dedicated to her daughter Barbara and likely intended as a work of religious instruction. The work was posthumously published in 1817.