Blount, Martha Marie, 1690-1763 (Library of Congress Name Authority)—Martha Marie Blount was a close friend to author Alexander Pope, so much so that some contemporaries speculated that she was his lover or even secret wife. Because her family estate was concentrated on her younger brother, the shy, quiet-tempered Martha spent many of her adult years living with her more difficult sister Teresa (b. 1688), addressee of Pope's poems "Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Works of Voiture" (1710) and "Epistle to Miss Blount, on her Leaving the Town after the Coronation" (1714). Blount was also cousin to Arabella Fermor, subject of Pope's Rape of the Lock. When Pope died, he left Martha an inheritance sufficient to enable her for the first time to establish a household independent of her sister.