The History of British Women's Writing, 1610-1690

During the seventeenth century, in response to political and social upheavals such as the English Civil Wars, women produced writings in both manuscript and print. This volume represents recent scholarship that has uncovered new texts as well as introduced new paradigms to further our understanding of women's literary history during this period.

List of Figures Notes on Contributors Chronology Introduction; M. Suzuki PART I: NETWORKS, DEBATES, TRADITIONS, DISCOURSES Identifying as (Women) Writers; P. Salzman Channeling the Gender Debate: Legitimation and Agency in Seventeenth-Century Tracts and Women's Poetry; M. Matchinske All about Eve: Seventeenth Century Women Writers and the Narrative of the Fall; S. Miller English Civil War Women Writers and the Discourses of Fifth Monarchism; K. Gillespie PART II: MODES AND SITES Seventeenth-Century Women's Manuscript Writing; V. Burke Reading Seventeenth-Century Women's Letters; S. Wiseman Women's Self-Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Monuments; P. Phillippy PART III: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LITERARY GENRES 'More lively, parfett, lasting, and more true': Mary Wroth's Indefensible Apologies for Poesy; C. Kinney Valuing Early Modern Women's Verse in the Twenty-first Century; P. Hammons Early Modern Englishwomen Dramatists (1610-1690): New Perspectives; M. Wynne-Davies History, Satire, and Fiction by British Women Writers in the Seventeenth Century; M. Reeves PART IV: REVISIONING CONTEXTS Critiquing the Sexual Economies of Early Modern Marriage in Aphra Behn and Margaret Cavendish's Plays; T. Jankowski 'The Empire of Man over the inferiour Creatures': British Women, Race, and Seventeenth-Century Science; C. Malcolmson Questioning Gender, War, and the 'Old Lie': The Military Expertise of Margaret Cavendish; J. Wright Women, Civil War, and Empire: The Politics of Translation in Katherine Philips's Pompey and Horace; M. Suzuki English Women's Writing and Islamic Empires, 1610-90; B. Andrea Bibliography Index