Dorothy Moore (née King, later Dorothy Dury), was an original and sometimes acerbic – but in her lifetime almost completely unpublished – advocate of women's rights to education and some measure of social independence.
Born near Dublin in 1612 or 1613 to the royal administrator Sir John King and his wife Katherine, Moore presumably received private tuition as a girl, and by her late twenties had mastered French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Probably in the late 1620s, she married the wealthy MP and alleged drunkard Arthur Moore, with whom she had two sons, Charles and John.
Left with a substantial income from her husband's Irish estates after his death on 9 April 1635, Moore coped happily enough as a single mother …
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Citation: Young, John. "Dorothy Moore". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5689, accessed 22 November 2024.]
