Masculine Births

Lynne Greenberg is a professor of English at Hunter College, CUNY. She is the editor of Legal Treatises in The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works and Printed Writings series and Fairy Poems in the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series, as well as the author of The Body Broken: A Memoir.

"We have long known that Milton situates women at the heart of his works. To this, Greenberg makes the arresting and compelling claim that when he thinks about or represents women, Milton does so with an awareness of their specifically legal standing. Masculine Births is a fine work of scholarship with top-notch research that stands to advance the field and fill an important gap." —Alison Chapman, University of Alabama at Birmingham"Masculine Births is a breath of fresh air. By examining Milton's works in the light of seventeenth-century English law, Greenberg offers new insights not only into Milton's fictional women but also into the historical women he interacted with. Always vigilant and never merely wishful, Greenberg demonstrates that Milton's liberationist project extends to women, even if he did not always want it to." —John Leonard, Western University

• Introduction Chapter 1. Maidens Chapter 2. Wives Chapter 3. Mothers Chapter 4. Heiresses Chapter 5. Widows Chapter 6. Queens Coda Acknowledgments Notes Manuscript Sources and Abbreviations Bibliography