Martha Fowke, later Martha Sansom, (1 May 1689 – 1736) was an English poet associated chiefly with the circle about Aaron Hill. She was the daughter of Major Thomas Fowke, an army officer murdered in 1708,[1] and his wife Mary (née Cullen). Born in Hertfordshire on 1 May 1689 to a family of Roman Catholic gentry, she was educated at home and at boarding school. Her mother had been less supportive of her daughter's writing than her father. Fowke lived in London after her mother died in 1705, but moved to East Anglia in 1730 with her husband, Arnold Sansom, whom she had married around 1721. Their marriage was not a happy one.[2]