Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700 (Early Modern Literature in History)

✍ Scribed by James Daybell

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 228
• Series: Early Modern Literature in History
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This landmark book of essays examines the development of women's letter writing from the late 15th to the early 18th century. It is the first book to deal comprehensively with women's letter writing during the Late Medieval and Early Modern period and shows that this was a larger and more socially diversified area of female activity than has generally been assumed. The essays, contributed by many of the leading researchers active in the field, illustrate women's engagement in various activities, both literary and political, social and religious.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 10
List of Abbreviations......Page 12
Notes on the Contributors......Page 14
1. Introduction......Page 16
2. Reaction, Consolation and Redress in the Letters of the Paston Women......Page 31
3. Letter-Writing by English Noblewomen in the Early Fifteenth Century......Page 44
4. Commanding Communications: the Fifteenth-Century Letters of the Stonor Women......Page 57
5. Female Literacy and the Social Conventions of Women's Letter-Writing in England, 1540-1603......Page 74
6. Deference and Defiance in Women's Letters of the Thynne Family: the Rhetoric of Relationships......Page 92
7. Fighting for Family in a Patronage Society: the Epistolary Armoury of Anne Newdigate (1574-1618)......Page 109
8. ‘How Subject to Interpretation’: Lady Arbella Stuart and the Reading of Illness......Page 124
9. Tudor and Stuart Women: their Lives through their Letters......Page 142
10. Patriarchy, Puritanism and Politics: the Letters of Lady Brilliana Harley(1598-1643)......Page 158
11. ‘Doe not supose me a well mortifyed Nun dead to the world’: Letter-Writingin Early Modern English Convents......Page 174
12. Gentle Companions: Single Women and their Letters in Late Stuart England......Page 192
13. ‘Begging pardon for all mistakes or errors in this writeing I being a woman & doing itt myselfe': Family Narratives in some Early Eighteenth-Century Letters......Page 209
Index......Page 222