The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing

Knoppers, Laura Lunger
Laura Lunger Knoppers is Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University.

Featuring the most frequently taught female writers and texts of the early modern period, this Companion introduces the reader to the range, complexity, historical importance, and aesthetic merit of women's writing in Britain from 1500-1700. Presenting key textual, historical, and methodological information, the volume exemplifies new and diverse approaches to the study of women's writing. The book is clearly divided into three sections, covering: how women learnt to write and how their work was circulated or published; how and what women wrote in the places and spaces in which they lived, worked, and worshipped; and the different kinds of writing women produced, from poetry and fiction to letters, diaries, and political prose. This structure makes the volume readily adaptable to course usage. The Companion is enhanced by an introduction that lays out crucial framework and critical issues, and by chronologies that situate women's writings alongside political and cultural events.

Ideal for courses, this Companion examines the range, historical importance, and aesthetic merit of women's writing in Britain, 1500-1700.

Introduction: critical framework and issues Laura Lunger Knoppers; Part I. Material Matters: 1. Women's handwriting Heather Wolfe; 2. Reading women Edith Snook; 3. Manuscript miscellanies Victoria E. Burke; 4. Women, the material book, and early printing Marcy L. North; Part II. Sites of Production: 5. Women in educational spaces Caroline Bowden; 6. Women in the household Wendy Wall; 7. Women in church and in devotional spaces Elizabeth Clarke; 8. Women in the royal courts Karen Britland; 9. Women in the law courts Frances E. Dolan; 10. Women in healing spaces Mary E. Fissell; Part III. Genres and Modes: 11. Translation Danielle Clarke; 12. Letters James Daybell; 13. Autobiography Ramona Wray; 14. Lyric poetry Helen Wilcox; 15. Narrative poetry Susanne Woods; 16. Prophecy and religious polemic Hilary Hinds; 17. Private drama Marta Straznicky; 18. Public drama Derek Hughes; 19. Prose fiction Lori Humphrey Newcomb.