Elizabeth Scott-Baumann

Sarah C. E. Ross

This anthology brings together extensive selections of poetry by the live most prolific and prominent women poets of the English Civil War period: Anne Bradstreet, Hester Puller, Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson. These poets participated in elite poetic culture at the highest level, writing elegies, panegyrics and epics; they were politically engaged; and their female authorship strategies were nuanced but clear, as they took diverse approaches to publication in manuscript and print. Their poetry is at the centre of discussion and debate about early modern women's poetry, but until now, substantial edited selections of their work have not been available in one place. The anthology brings together the most innovative, complex poems of each writer, revealing the diversity of women's poetry in the mid-seventeenth century, as it traversed political affiliations and material forms. This anthology presents poems in modern-spelling, clear-text versions for classroom use, and for ready comparison to mainstream editions of male poets' work. Notes on the poems and an introduction explain the contexts of the Civil War, religious conflict, and scientific and literary development, and will serve students' and academics' needs alike. Women poets of the English Civil War is ideal for use alongside mainstream anthologies of early modern poetry, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of seventeenth-century women's poetic culture, in its own right, and in relation to prominent male poets such as Marvell, Milton and Dryden.

Women Poets of the English Civil War

Danielle Clarke

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 brings together new work by scholars across the globe, from some of the founding figures in early modern women's writing to those early in their careers and defining the field now. It investigates how and where women gained access to education, how they developed their literary voice through varied genres including poetry, drama, and letters, and how women cultivated domestic and technical forms of knowledge from recipes and needlework to medicines and secret codes. Chapters investigate the ways in which women's writing was an integral part of the intellectual culture of the period, engaging with male writers and traditions, while also revealing the ways in which women's lives and writings were often distinctly different, from women prophetesses to queens, widows, and servants. It explores the intersections of women writing in English with those writing in French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, in Europe and in New England, and argues for an archipelagic understanding of women's writing in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England. Finally, it reflects on--and challenges--the methodologies which have developed in, and with, the field: book and manuscript history, editing, digital analysis, premodern critical race studies, network theory, queer theory, and feminist theory. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 captures the most innovative work on early modern women's writing in English at present.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700

Women, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century Britain offers a new account of women's engagement in the poetic and political cultures of seventeenth-century England and Scotland. Where previous studies have focused on the prominent printed writings of Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn, this book provides the first extended discussion of seventeenth-century women's political poetry in manuscript, offering detailed new readings ofElizabeth Melville, Anne Southwell, Jane Cavendish, Hester Pulter, and Lucy Hutchinson.

Women, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-century Britain

James Acheson

These specially commissioned essays, focusing largely on authors whose first novels have appeared since 1980, examine the work of more than 20 major British novelists, including Peter Ackroyd, Martin Amis, Iain M. Banks, Janice Galloway, A.L. Kennedy, Zadie Smith, Irvine Welsh and Jeanette Winterson.

Sarah C. E. Ross

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