Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works & Printed Writings, 1641-1700: Series II, Part One – serie

Early modern men and women represented their lives very differently from twentieth-century autobiographers, sharing none of the current preoccupation with individuality and the unique self. The writers represented in this two-volume collection sought connections between particular events in their lives and the larger pattern of Christian salvation. The texts reproduced here are united in the way they interconnect personal experiences and feelings with scriptural passages in an attempt to understand daily life in spiritual terms. Almost all the women whose works appear in these volumes would have been considered religious radicals by their contemporaries. Living through the turbulent times of the English Revolution (1642-1660) it is unsurprising that their life writings are marked by a sense of persecution. Many of them spent time in prison: Katherine Evans, Sarah Cheevers and Barbara Blaugdane were all imprisoned for preaching the faith of The Society of Friends, while Mary Rowlandson spent several months as a captive of North American Indians. In her introduction to these writings, Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler provides brief biographical sketches of these writers, together with details of the publication history of each text. With the exception of Rowlandson's works, the writings in these volumes are the first complete, unabridged editions in modern times.

Early modern men and women represented their lives very differently from twentieth-century autobiographers, sharing none of the current preoccupation with individuality and the unique self. The writers represented in this two-volume collection sought connections between particular events in their lives and the larger pattern of Christian salvation. The texts reproduced here are united in the way they interconnect personal experiences and feelings with scriptural passages in an attempt to understand daily life in spiritual terms. Almost all the women whose works appear in these volumes would have been considered religious radicals by their contemporaries. Living through the turbulent times of the English Revolution (1642-1660) it is unsurprising that their life writings are marked by a sense of persecution. Many of them spent time in prison: Katherine Evans, Sarah Cheevers and Barbara Blaugdane were all imprisoned for preaching the faith of The Society of Friends, while Mary Rowlandson spent several months as a captive of North American Indians. In her introduction to these writings, Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler provides brief biographical sketches of these writers, together with details of the publication history of each text. With the exception of Rowlandson's works, the writings in these volumes are the first complete, unabridged editions in modern times.

From the beginning of the seventeenth century, English society started to become preoccupied with education and how people acquired it. It is all the more surprising, then, that there should be relatively few early modern texts by Englishwomen devoted to the question of how one should learn. The four texts printed here are principally concerned with language and arithemetic. One of the reasons for the paucity of such writings is that many commentators viewed women's ability to write as a threat to social stability. The education of women was at best ad hoc. A few attended dame schools, and the wealthy could afford private tutors. Among her own family and friends, however, the individual learned girl was often celebrated, and instances of formal praise act as forewords to some of the texts printed in this volume.

The four works in this volume are the only known exclusively medical texts written by women during the Restoration. Their importance is denoted by their dramatic challenge to the generalisations once made about medical practice and female healers in this period. Jane Sharp's The Midwives Book was the first and only midwifery manual to be printed in English before 1700, and continued to be influential into the early eighteenth century. The principal focus of Elizabeth Cellier's To Dr.--- (1688) is the attempt to legitimate the notion of a female corporation of midwives through historical precedent. To Dr.--- was in fact borne out of a previously unpublished effort, 'A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital', sent to James II in 1687. In the document, Cellier outlined a specific scheme for training female midwives and supporting poor, pregnant women and abandoned children. Mary Trye began practising 'chymical physic' at her father's side in London in 1663. Her only known work, Medicatrix, was published in 1675. Trye claimed female medical authorship to be unique, in that women observed nature truly and administered genuine medical solutions to the sick. The writings of Sharp, Cellier and Trye have helped to overturn historians' assumptions about a woman's role in medicine and healing. These texts reveal their female authors to be as learned in the humanities and sciences as they were in medical matters.

The four plays in this volume represent just a small fraction of the total output by early modern women dramatists. Other plays will appear in later volumes in the facsimile series devoted to individual authors. Marcelia (1660), The Perjur'd Husband (1700), She Ventures and He Wins (1695) and The Unnatural Mother (1698) were written at a point in time when women playwrights were becoming a significant force in the theatre. Many of these plays were first performed in key theatrical venues by well-established drama companies. The scant critical attention paid to these works since they were first written begins to be rectified in this volume. Stephanie Hodgson-Wright discusses the playwrights and their texts, and explains the choice of editions printed here.

A form of courtesy literature, Mother's Advice Books were texts written by mothers to instruct their children in religious, educational, and occasionally wordly matters. The three texts included in this volume, Elizabeth Richardson's A Ladies Legacie to her Davghters, Susanna Bell's The Legacy of a Dying Mother To Her Mourning Children, and the unattributed The Mothers Blessing, offer interesting alternatives to the many published male views of the family from the period. Indeed, this volume features an appendix with two much shorter portions of predominantly male-authored texts: Mary Pennyman's letter to her children, published as part of John Pennyman's Instruction to his Children, and Elizabeth Walker's 'For my Dear Children, Mrs.Margaret Walker and Elizabeth Walker', included in Anthony Walker's The Holy Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Walker. The fact that these women were mothers gave them an authority to write that other women were not easily granted, and it is clear that many of these works were written with publication in mind. In addition to giving women public status as authors, these books also enabled them to enter political and religious debates under the guise of offering advice to their children. The Mother's Advice Book is, then, an intriguing genre that simultaneously violates and yet replicates early modern patriarchy.

Almanacs were highly influential on popular opinion during the early modern period. They were the least expensive kinds of books and had a practical use as a calendar, literary miscellany, weather guide and advertising medium. The almanacs in this volume contribute to our understanding of women's participation in popular culture, astrology, medicine and prophecy. Sarah Jinner's almanacs for the years 1658, 1659 and 1664, and Mary Holden's almanacs for 1688 and 1689 show a conscious effort to distance themselves from other female religious prophets of the period by relying on the status of astrology as a rational science. The other works in the volume are all attributed to writers who were probably pseudonymous. Dorothy Partridge's The Woman's Almanack for the Year 1694 includes several short articles on chiromancy. The Prophesie of Mother Shipton concerns the prediction of the deaths of Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. The final works in the volume comprise two texts by Shinkin ap Shone which satirize the Welsh people and language, and The Woman's Alamanack by Sarah Ginnor which uses sexual humour to parody the medical advice offered in Jinner's almanacs.