Sarah Fyge Egerton (1668–1723) was an English poet who wrote in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In her works The Female Advocate and Poems on Several Occasions, Egerton wrote about gender, friendship, marriage, religion, education, politics, and other topics. She is chiefly known as the spirited teen who responded in defense of women to Robert Gould's misogynist satire.
Life
Sarah Fyge was born in London and baptized on 20 December 1668. She was the daughter of Thomas Fyge (d. 1705) and his first wife Rebecca Alcock (d. 1672). Alcock died when Egerton was three years old and she was raised by her father's second wife, Mary Beacham (d. 1704). Fyge, in addition to being an apothecary in London, was a descendant of the Figge family of Winslow, Buckinghamshire, from which he inherited a plot of land. As the daughter of a landowning apothecary, Egerton had the benefit of living in a relatively wealthy environment. Based on her family's wealth and references found within her works, it appears that she had some education, whether formal or informal, in fields such as mythology, philosophy, and geography. When she was 14 years old, Egerton wrote her most popular work, The Female Advocate (1686). The Female Advocate is a poem written in response to Robert Gould's Love Given O'er: Or a Satyr on the Inconstancy of Woman, which accuses women of being a source of evil. Upon the publication of a second edition of The Female Advocate, Thomas Fyge banished his daughter from their London home, and she went to live with family members in Winslow, Buckinghamshire. Egerton later recalled this tumultuous time in her poem "On my leaving London," included in her collection Poems on Several Occasions (1703).
Sarah Fyge was married two times, first to attorney Edward Field in the late 1680s or early 1690s. Egerton was reluctant to enter into the marriage and describes her concerns in the poem "On my wedding Day." However, the marriage was brief, ended by Edward's death sometime before 1700. She went on to marry her much older second cousin Thomas Egerton, a widowed clergyman who presided over Adstock, Buckinghamshire. Both before and during her second marriage, Egerton maintained feelings for Henry Pierce, an associate of her first husband. She wrote him many letters, and she addresses him as "Alexis" in several poems. The Egertons' marriage was well known for its open hostility, and in 1703 they filed for divorce, but for one reason or another it was not granted. The author Delarivier Manley and Egerton had a genial relationship at one time; however, Egerton's testimony against Manley in a trial marked the beginning of a period of animosity. By 1709, Manley openly criticised Egerton and her second marriage in The New Atalantis with lines like, "Her face protects her chastity," and a scene featuring a violent fight during which Sarah threw a pie at her husband. Manley's infamous commentary upon Egerton and her marriage appear to mark the end of Egerton's public life. Few, if any, references can be found about her aside from the inscription of her name on her husband's burial monument in 1720 and the record of her own death 13 February 1723.
In her will made in 1721 (with two codicils in 1722), Egerton asked to be buried either in Winslow church or Westminster Abbey. She made bequests to the poor of Winslow, Adstock, and Shenley (Bucks), where she owned property probably inherited from her first husband. There were numerous bequests to various friends and relatives, including her three sisters. She also specified: "Six Ladys to bear the Pall each to have 20s Ring enameld with white wrote within only remember Clarinda 1721." The sole executor and apparently the main beneficiary was Thomas Aldridge.
Works
Like many other 17th- and 18th-century women authors, Egerton probably shared her work amongst a coterie of female poets. She states in her dedication to the Earl of Hallifax in Poems on Several Occasions (1703), "They [her poems] never were abroad before, nor e'er seen but by my own sex, some of which have favour'd me with their compliments." At times her works were not only reviewed by her peers, but were also part of collaborative pieces like The Nine Muses—an elegiac tribute to John Dryden. She is best known for her own work The Female Advocate (1686), which argued against social customs that she felt restricted female freedom. In the dedication to Poems on Several Occasions, Egerton wrote that love was "the only proper theme" for women. Her lasting legacy, however, derives from for her works advocating women's rights.
