Anne Dutton


Anne Dutton was an English poet and Calvinist Baptist writer on religion. She published around 50 titles and corresponded with George Whitefield and John Wesley.

Life

Born in Northampton, she survived a near-fatal childhood illness, from which "she acquired an acute sense of sin." She was given a religious education.
Aged 22 she married a Mr Coles, living in London and Warwick, before being widowed five years later. She married again to Benjamin Dutton, a clothier who entered the Baptist ministry. They settled at Great Gransden, Huntingdonshire, in 1732, and paid for a chapel to be built there. A desire to give "service to the Cause of Christ" gradually overcome her ill health. In 1747 her husband travelled to America to raise money, but she became widowed again when his return ship was lost at sea.

Tracts

Dutton's Narration of the Wonders of Grace was a 1500-line poem in heroic couplets, complete with marginal references to Scripture, reviewing redemption history from the point of view of Calvinist Baptists. In her correspondence with Wesley she differed with him over the question of Election. A Brief Account of the Negroes Converted to Christ in America was one of 13 tracts and letters she published in 1743 alone. George Whitfield was another recipient of her work.
Selections from her work were republished in six volumes in 2003–2009.

Works