PYE (Mendez), JAEL HENRIETTA

PYE (Mendez), JAEL HENRIETTA (c. 1737–1782), English writer. Apparently the daughter of a wealthy London merchant named Mendez and the niece of Moses mendez (c. 1690–1788), the playwright and poet, in 1762 she married John Neil Campbell, a barrister, and, in 1766, Robert Hampden Pye, the son of a member of Parliament and the brother of the Poet Laureate Henry Pye. Her anonymous book of verse, Poems. By a Lady (1767), and her novel, Theodosius and Ara-bella (1768), are the earliest recorded contributions of a Jewess to English literature. She lived much of her life in France, where she died. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: ODNB online; Katz, England, 255. (William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)