The History of British Women’s Writing, 1610–1690

356 Pages·2011·2.378 MB·English

by  Mihoko Suzuki (eds.)

The History of British Women’s Writing, 1610–1690
The History of British Women’s Writing
General Editors: Jennie Batchelor and Cora Kaplan
Advisory Board: Isobel Armstrong, Rachel Bowlby, Carolyn Dinshaw, Margaret Ezell,
Margaret Ferguson, Isobel Grundy, and Felicity Nussbaum
The History of British Women’s Writing is an innovative and ambitious monograph series that
seeks both to synthesize the work of several generations of feminist scholars, and to advance
new directions for the study of women’s writing. Volume editors and contributors are leading
scholars whose work collectively reflects the global excellence in this expanding field of study.
It is envisaged that this series will be a key resource for specialist and non-specialist scholars
and students alike.
Titles include:
Caroline Bicks and Jennifer Summit (editors)
THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1500–1610
Volume Two
Mihoko Suzuki (editor)
THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1610–1690
Volume Three
Ros Ballaster (editor)
THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1690–1750
Volume Four
Jacqueline M. Labbe (editor)
THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1750–1830
Volume Five
Forthcoming titles:
Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy and Diane Watt (editors)
THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 700–1500
Volume One
Mary Joannou (editor)
THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1920–1945
Volume Eight
History of British Women’s Writing
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The History of British
Women’s Writing,
1610–1690
Volume Three
Edited by
Mihoko Suzuki
Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Humanities
at the University of Miami
Palgrave
macmillan
Selection and editorial matter © Mihoko Suzuki 2011
Individual chapters © contributors 2011
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-22460-5
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First published 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-349-30955-9 ISBN 978-0-230-30550-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230305502
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
Contents
List of Figures vii
Series Preface viii
Acknowledgments x
Notes on Contributors xi
Chronology xv
Introduction 1
Mihoko Suzuki
Part I Networks, Debates, Traditions, Discourses
1 Identifying as (Women) Writers 33
Paul Salzman
2 Channeling the Gender Debate: Legitimation and Agency
in Seventeenth-Century Tracts and Women’s Poetry 48
Megan Matchinske
3 All about Eve: Seventeenth-Century Women Writers and
the Narrative of the Fall 64
Shannon Miller
4 English Civil War Women Writers and the Discourses of
Fifth Monarchism 80
Katharine Gillespie
Part II Modes and Sites
5 Seventeenth-Century Women’s Manuscript Writing 99
Victoria E. Burke
6 Reading Seventeenth-Century Women’s Letters 114
Susan Wiseman
7 ‘Herselfe livinge, to be pictured’: ‘Monumental Circles’
and Women’s Self-Portraiture 129
Patricia Phillippy
v
vi Contents
Part III New Perspectives on Literary Genres
8 ‘More lively, parfett, lasting, and more true’: Mary Wroth’s
Indefensible Apologies for Poesy 155
Clare R. Kinney
9 Valuing Early Modern Women’s Verse in the
Twenty-First Century 171
Pamela Hammons
10 Early Modern English Women Dramatists (1610–1690):
New Perspectives 187
Marion Wynne-Davies
11 History, Satire, and Fiction by British Women Writers in
the Seventeenth Century 204
Margaret Reeves
Part IV Revisioning Contexts
12 Critiquing the Sexual Economies of Marriage 221
Theodora A. Jankowski
13 ‘The Empire of Man over the inferior Creatures’: British
Women, Race, and Seventeenth-Century Science 238
Cristina Malcolmson
14 Questioning Gender, War, and ‘the Old Lie’:
The Military Expertise of Margaret Cavendish 254
Joanne Wright
15 Women, Civil War, and Empire: The Politics of Translation
in Katherine Philips’s Pompey and Horace 270
Mihoko Suzuki
16 English Women’s Writing and Islamic Empires, 1610–1690 287
Bernadette Andrea
Select Bibliography 303
Index 321
List of Figures
1. Unknown artist, Monument for Margaret Talbot, St Dustan-
in-the-West, London (1620). Photo: Patricia Phillippy. 130
2. Unknown artist, Monument for Richard and Charity
Leche (detail), Ss Mary and Andrew, Fletching (1596).
Photo: Patricia Phillippy. 133
3. Joshua Marshall, Monument for Mary Brocas, St Margaret’s
Westminster (1654). © Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 135
4. Simon van de Passe, portrait of Anne Bill from Martin
Day (?), Peplem Modestiae, The Vaile of Modesty
(London: John Hodgett, 1621). © The British Library
Board (C.122.b.8). 138
5. Bartholomew Ayte and Isaac James, Monument for
Richard Kingsmill (detail), St Michael’s, Highclere
(1601). Photo courtesy of Jane Malcolm-Davies
(http://www.tudoreffi gies.c o.uk). 140
6. Bartholomew Ayte and Isaac James, Monument for
Sir Thomas Lucy II, St Leonard’s, Charlecote (1605).
Photo: Phil Draper (http://www.churchcrawler.co.uk). 141
7. Unknown artist, Monument for Constance Whitney,
St Giles Cripplegate, London (1628). Destroyed in World
War Two. Photo: Catherine Weed Ward. Courtesy of
George Eastman House, International Museum of
Photography and Film. 143
8. Unknown artist, Monument for Margaret Lucy, St Giles
Cripplegate (1634). Photo: Patricia Phillippy. 144
9. Edward or Joshua Marshall, Monument for Frances
Kniveton (detail), St Giles-in-the-Fields, London (1663).
Photo: Patricia Phillippy. 147
10. Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth by Pierre
Mignard. National Portrait Gallery, London (497). 222
11. Margaret Cavendish (Lucas), Duchess of Newcastle by
Pieter Louis van Schuppen (after Abraham Diepenbeeck).
National Portrait Gallery, London (D 11111). 235
vii
Series Preface
One of the most significant developments in literary studies in the last
quarter of a century has been the remarkable growth of scholarship on
women’s writing. This was inspired by, and in turn provided inspira-
tion for, a post-war women’s movement, which saw women’s cultural
expression as key to their emancipation. The retrieval, republication,
and reappraisal of women’s writing, beginning in the mid-1960s, have
radically affected the literary curriculum in schools and universities.
A revised canon now includes many more women writers. Literature
courses that focus on what women thought and wrote from antiquity
onwards have become popular undergraduate and postgraduate options.
These new initiatives have meant that gender – in language, authors,
texts, audience, and in the history of print culture more generally – are
central questions for literary criticism and literary history. A mass of
fascinating research and analysis extending over several decades now
stands as testimony to a lively and diverse set of debates, in an area of
work that is still expanding.
Indeed so rapid has this expansion been, that it has become increas-
ingly difficult for students and academics to have a comprehensive
view of the wider field of women’s writing outside their own period or
specialism. As the research on women has moved from the margins to
the confident centre of literary studies it has become rich in essays and
monographs dealing with smaller groups of authors, with particular
genres and with defined periods of literary production, reflecting the
divisions of intellectual labour and development of expertise that are
typical of the discipline of literary studies. Collections of essays that
provide overviews within particular periods and genres do exist, but no
published series has taken on the mapping of the field even within one
language group or national culture.
A History of British Women’s Writing is intended as just such a carto-
graphic standard work. Its ambition is to provide, in ten volumes edited
by leading experts in the field, and comprised of newly commissioned
essays by specialist scholars, a clear and integrated picture of women’s
contribution to the world of letters within Great Britain from m edieval
viii
Series Preface ix
times to the present. In taking on such a wide-ranging project we
were inspired by the founding, in 2003, of Chawton House Library,
a UK registered charity with a unique collection of books focusing on
women’s writing in English from 1600 to 1830, set in the home and
working estate of Jane Austen’s brother.
JENNIE BATCHELOR
UNIVERSITY OF KENT
CORA KAPLAN
QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON