Biography of Sarah Wesley
Sarah Wesley was a Methodist writer, born on 1 April 1759 to parents Charles and Sarah Wesley in Charles Street, Bristol. As a child, Sarah Wesley was inclined to and naturally gifted in the arts, being described by her brother Charles Wesley as having “a good ear for music, [singing] well” (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2006) and having the potential to be a “good instrumentalist but [she] preferred reading to the rigours of practice” (ODNB 2006). Sarah Wesley also wrote poetry from a young age and was known to be quiet with the “shyness and love of solitude and books which characterized her throughout life” (ODNB 2006). Despite Sarah Wesley’s literary ability, she often avoided sharing her work, even with her own father, given his critical nature (ODNB 2006). She did share some of her work with Samuel Johnson, who she had met through her aunt Martha Hall, who she was also especially close to (ODNB 2006). Sarah Wesley was raised by a Methodist nurse and raised in a Methodist family, however, unlike the rest of her family, she did not hold Tory principles and did not enjoy discussing or partaking in politics (ODNB 2006). Nonetheless, she “rejoiced at the destruction of Bastille while abhorring the treatment of the French royal family during the revolution” (ODNB 2006). Given Sarah Wesley’s distaste for politics (ODNB 2006), she was pronounced by her father as one of the more rebellious children within the Wesley family, with “the rebel blood of some of her ancestors [flowing] through her veins” (ODNB 2006).
Sarah Wesley was the middle child in her family, with an older brother named Charles Wesley (1757-1834) and younger, Samuel Wesley (1766-1873). Both brothers were gifted in the arts, particularly music, and pursued careers as musicians. The elder of the two, Charles Wesley, began to “display musical precocity” (ODNB 2004) at the extremely young age of about two and three-quarters. While his talent in music was not fully supported by his father early on, he attempted a career in music later, however, he saw mediocre success and mainly made a “living by giving recitals and [having] more regular employment as [an] organist at several Anglican chapels” (ODNB 2004). Sarah Wesley was fond of her brother Charles Wesley and enjoyed his “gentle and rather unworldly” (ODNB 2006) personality which appeared to be on par with her own. On the other hand, Samuel Wesley enjoyed a much more prestigious career in music as a composer and organist. In comparison to the comfort she sought in her older brother Charles Wesley, Sarah Wesley was often “troubled by the irregular life” (ODNB 2006) of the younger Samuel Wesley. Their father, Charles Wesley (1707-1788), was a Church of England clergyman and a founder of Methodism, along with his older brother, John Wesley (1702-1791). Charles and John Wesley began the Methodist revival in England “as a movement within the Church of England in the 19th century” (Wikipedia) with “The fellowship [being] branded as “Methodist” by their fellow students because of the way they used ‘rule’ and ‘method’ to go about their religious affairs” (Wikipedia). Charles Wesley’s wife and the mother of the three was Sarah Wesley, a Methodist sympathizer, who as a child was educated by private masters and was extremely gifted in music, a trait which her children appeared to inherit. She was devout from a young age, “receiving communion at fourteen” (ODNB 2012) and when she was older, maintaining her devotion to Methodism, limiting her reading “to religious books, for she did not relish any others” (ODNB 2012). The couple had a total of eight children while only the three, Charles, Sarah, and Samuel, survived to maturity. Given the elder Charles and Sarah Wesley’s leadership and devotion to Methodism, the Wesley family was extremely important in Methodism and in the Methodist movement.
Sarah Wesley’s inner circle included “minor literary figures such as Elizabeth Benger, novelist and biographer, the Methodist artist John Russell (who painted her portrait), and the educationist Elizabeth Hamilton” (ODNB 2006). She was also well acquainted within the Bluestocking network, with whom she often exchanged letters. Sarah Wesley sent and exchanged letters with the likes of Lucy Aikin, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Louisa Barwell, and Elizabeth Spence (Winckles 2017), among many others.
Despite Sarah Wesley’s talent in writing, she published little to none of her own works, and when she did publish, she did so in the form of manuscript, often using scribal publication and circulation to share her work. If she did publish her work in print, she did so anonymously. This practice of “scribal publication and circulation was, in fact, well established within the Bluestocking network” (Winckles 2017). Sarah Wesley was well acquainted and respected within the Bluestocking community and would often write and exchange letters with the other women, including her work in these letters and asking for their feedback (Winckles 2017). Wesley’s career as a poet and writer has previously been described as underwhelming, limited by her “retiring nature and modesty” (ODNB 2006) and her assumed shy and quiet character. Her friend Elizabeth Hamilton “believed that had she made the effort, she could have earned a living by writing” (ODNB 2006). Given Sarah Wesley’s openness to sharing her work with the women within the Bluestocking network, many of whom were established and respected writers themselves, her lack of print publication can be more so attributed to her anxiety in “[countering] unfavourable judgements on the Wesley brothers’ actions and characters” (ODNB 2006), and perhaps even to a preference for more authentic and selective circulation such as the scribal method, than to her supposed solemn characteristics. While scribal publication was less accessible to general or public audiences and more private than print publication, it was definitely popular and respected within Sarah Wesley’s networks, including the Bluestockings and also by the Methodists.
Given the Wesley family’s obvious prominence and leadership in Methodism, Sarah Wesley was strongly been affiliated with the religion. In regard to her writing, her literary contributions to Methodism were indirect (ODNB 2006), and she often acted as a “respiratory and transmitter” (ODNB 2006) of the Wesley family traditions. Her father had been “concerned for her religious development, but would not force her into Methodist meetings in case aversion to her company prejudiced her against religion” (ODNB 2006). Given Wesley’s affiliation to this religious movement, she not only associated with religious women influenced by Bluestockingism, “but also by the type of evangelicalism that John and Charles Wesley popularized throughout Great Britain during the eighteenth century” (Winckles 2017). According to Andrew Winckles, this shift in the religious sector within Great Britain encouraged these women to turn toward the “discourses of Romanticism and evangelicalism for the means through which to understand and control their enthusiasm” (2017), which may explain Wesley’s lack of formal publication for her work. Wesley’s preferred method of circulating her manuscripts “allowed [the women] a level of control over the production and circulation of their own work that they would not otherwise have been able to enjoy” (Winckles 2017). In comparison to the argument that Sarah Wesley had an unsuccessful literary career as a result of her shy or private nature, Winckles presents an alternative perspective where Sarah Wesley did in fact share her work and was well-respected within the Bluestocking and Evangelical literary community and is often superficially cast off as unsuccessful due to her chosen mode of publication. Especially with the Bluestocking and Evangelical literary communities’ collective use of scribal publication as one way of sharing their works with each other, Sarah Wesley was more likely to have been considered successful in her career than not, with any argument inclined to the latter drawing from her lack of mainstream, print publishing. Sarah Wesley’s decision to share her work using scribal publication would have allowed her to have more control over the audience and reception of her writing.
By the end of her lifetime, Sarah Wesley remained single and unmarried, despite having apparently “[received] at least two proposals” of marriage (ODNB 2006). She spent most of her time with her brother Charles Wesley. She lived in London for most of her life, however she visited Bristol often. Sarah Wesley got sick and died of a throat disease on 19 September 1828 and was “buried in the churchyard of St James’s, the church of her baptism” (ODNB 2006).
