Women’s Writing of the Early Modern Period, 1588-1688: An Anthology

This multi-genre anthology brings together a wide selection of women’s writing from the early modern period. These include writings by Margaret Cavendish, Anna Trapnel, Aphra Behn, Mary Carleton, Mary Herbert, Jane Anger and Rachel Speght. The volume covers a representative range of public and private genres from drama, poetry, literary prose and polemical prose and care has been taken to balance extracts and complete texts. The introduction sets out the aims of the volume, the principles of selection and arrangement, provides a chronology and concludes with a survey of the most relevant developments in feminist criticism and gender studies in the early modern period. Arranged chronologically, the texts encourage the reader to view them in relation to one another and the intellectual and historical conditions of their production.