Selected Letters of Anne Cator Steele

The two letters below involve a suitor's proposal to Steele and her letter of rejection, reminiscent of numerous such outbursts of unrequited passion in the poetry and fiction of the 17th and 18th centuries. For a biographical sketch of the life of Anne Cator Steele, click here; for selections from her diary, click here; for selections from her hymns, click here; for selections from her poetry, click here; for selections from her prose meditations, click here. For a fully annotated edition of Anne Cator Steele's correspondence, see Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 8, pp. 35-41.