Reading Early Modern Women

This book contains the first comprehensive account of writing by women from the mid sixteenth century through to 1700. At the same time, it traces the way a representative sample of that writing was published, circulated in manuscript, read, anthologised, reprinted, and discussed from the time it was produced through to the present day. Salzman's study covers an enormous range of women from all areas of early modern society, and it covers examples of the many and varied genres produced by these women, from plays to prophecies, diaries to poems, autobiographies to philosophy. As well as introducing readers to the wealth of material produced by women in the early modern period, this book examines changing responses to what was written, tracing a history of reception and transmission that amounts to a cultural history of changing taste.

Much has been written about women of the English Renaissance, but few examples of women's writing from that era have been readily available until now. This remarkable anthology assembles for the first time 144 primary texts and documents written by women between 1550 and 1700 and reveals an unprecedented view of the intellectual and literary lives of women in early modern England. The writings range from poetry to philosophical treatises, addressing a wide array of subjects including law, gender, education, motherhood, medicine, religion, life-writing, and the arts. Each selection is paired with a beautifully reproduced facsimile of the text's original source manuscript, allowing a glimpse into the literary past that will lead the reader to truly appreciate the care and craft with which these women writers prepared their texts. This essential anthology is a captivating guide to the legacy of early modern women's literature and its authors that must not be overlooked.

A History of Early Modern Women's Writing is essential reading for students and scholars working in the field of early modern British literature and history. This collaborative book of twenty-two chapters offers an expansive, multifaceted narrative of British women's literary and textual production in the period stretching from the English Reformation to the Restoration. Chapters work together to trace the contours of a diverse body of early modern women's writing, aligning women's texts with the major literary, political, and cultural currents with which they engage. Contributors examine and take account of developments in critical theory, feminism, and gender studies that have influenced the reception, reading, and interpretation of early modern women's writing. This book explicates and interrogates significant methodological and critical developments in the past four decades, guiding and testing scholarship in this period of intense activity in the recovery, dissemination, and interpretation of women's writing.

This remarkable anthology assembles for the first time 144 primary texts and documents written by women between 1550 and 1700 and reveals an unprecedented view of the intellectual and literary lives of women in early modern England

This exciting collection of original essays on early modern women’s writing offers a range of approaches to a growing field. As a whole, the volume introduces readers to a number of writers, such as Mirabai and Liu Rushi, who are virtually invisible in Anglophone scholarship, and to writers who remain little known, such as Elizabeth Melville, Elizabeth Hatton, and Jane Sharpe. The volume also represents critical strategies designed to open up the emergent canon of early modern women’s writing to new approaches, especially those that have consolidated the integration of literary and intellectual history, with an emphasis on religion, legal issues, and questions of genre. The authors expand the methodological possibilities available to approach early modern women who wrote in a diverse number of genres, from letters to poetry, autobiography and prose fiction. The sixteen essays are a major contribution to an area that has attracted the interest of a number of fields, including literary studies, history, cultural studies, and women’s studies.

The Politics of Early Modern Women's Writing provides an introduction to the ever-expanding field of early modern women's writing by reading texts in their historical and social contexts. Covering a wide range of forms and genres, the author shows that rather than women conforming to the conventional 'chaste, silent and obedient' model, or merely working from the 'margins' of Renaissance culture, they in fact engaged centrally with many of the major ideas and controversies of their time. The book discusses many previously neglected texts and authors, as well as more familiar figures such as Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, Isabella Whitney and Lady Mary Wroth, and draws attention to the importance of genre and forms of circulation in the production of meaning. The Politics of Early Modern Women will be of interest both to those encountering this material for the first time, and to students and scholars working in the fields of women's writing, gender studies, history and literature.

This volume offers a new and comprehensive exploration of the theory and practice of editing early modern women's writing.

The last twenty years have witnessed the rediscovery of a large number of women writers of the early modern period. This process of recovery has had a major impact on early modern studies for, by beginning to restore women to the history of the period, it provides new insight into the formative years of the modern era. This collection amply demonstrates the diversity as well as the literary and historical significance of early women's writing. It brings together studies by an impressive range of critics, including Elaine Hobby, Catherine Gallagher, Jane Spencer and Laura Brown, and examines the major works of five of the most important women writers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn and Anne Finch. The range of authors it covers, and the challenging critical work it presents, make Early Women Writers: 1600-1720 essential reading for students of feminist theory, Women's Studies and Cultural Studies, as well as for all those interested in the history and literature of the early modern period.