Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works & Printed Writings, 1500-1640: Series I, Part Three – serie

Elizabeth Tyrwhit's 1574 Morning and Euening Praiers is a collection of private prayers, a class of book that grew in both popularity and volume with the establishment of Protestantism in England from the mid-century on. These prayers first appeared in a tiny gilt girdle-book alongside the Litany, an incomplete copy of The Queen's Prayers by Katherine Parr and an incomplete copy of The Kalendar which are also reproduced in this facsimile edition.

An Epitome of the History of Faire Argenis and Polyarchus is Judith Man's English translation of a 1623 French work by Nicolas Coeffeteau, Histoire de Poliarque et d'Argenis, which is itself an abridgement and translation of one of the most widely read fictional works of the seventeenth century, John Barclay's 1621 Latin romance Argenis. An extended political allegory of the rise to power of the French king Henri IV, Barclay's romance is peppered with numerous veiled anecdotes of politics at the English and other European courts and long disquisitions on statecraft and political ethics. It has been assumed that Barclay's work was strictly for a male audience, but Man's translation is evidence that women did in fact read Argenis, and might even suggest that allegorical romance offered women writers and readers an inroad into political discourse.

The history of the angelicall virgin glorious S.Clare (Douai 1635) is a translation by 'Sister Magdalen' of a work by the Franciscan priest François Hendricq, Vie admirable de madame S. Claire fondatrice des Pauvres Clairesses (1631). In its turn Hendricq's book is largely a translation of parts of Luke Wadding's Annales ordinis minorum ('Annals of the Franciscan Order'). These volumes include an account of the activities of the young woman, Clara Offreduccio di Favarone, one of the many followers of St. Francis of Assisi. In 1212 Clara was advised by St. Francis to withdraw to the monastery at San Damiano in Assisi. In this way St. Francis founded his Second Order, an order of religious women known as the Poor Clares. 'Sister Magdalen' has been identified as Elizabeth Evelinge who belonged to a dissident group of Poor Clares that left their English convent at Gravelines in 1627 and started a new convent at Aire in May 1629. The copy of her translation reproduced in this volume is that of Heythrop College, University of London.

Delicious entertainments of the soule is a translation of a collection of conferences which Francis de Sales held for the Order of the Sisters of the Visitation. This order took the form of an institute for young girls and widows who wanted to enter a convent but lacked the strength or the inclination for the physical austerities of the great orders. It was for these sisters that Francis held conferences or 'familiar conversations' on religious topics at regular intervals. These conversations were not written out by Francis himself but were noted down and collected by the sisters. Pudentiana Deacon's translation of these transcripts gives the reader an idea of the personality of the speaker. De Sale comes across as a humane, commonsensical, practical man with an occasional sense of humour and a shrewd idea of the specific worries and temptations of his audience.

The declarations and ordinances made upon the rule of our holy mother S.Clare is an English translation of papal pronouncements upon the rules governing the convents of the Franciscan Order of St Clare. Elizabeth Evelinge's 176-page English version was published by one of the most prolific presses of the 17th-century English Roman Catholic exiles, the English College Press at St Omer. The edition, which was presumably very limited, was meant for English nuns living in monasteries in Flanders and Northern France. At her death, Elizabeth Evelinge was described as having 'a more polish'd way of writing above her sex. Her translation of The declarations at the age of just 25, testifies to her skills. The copy of the text reproduced here is that held at the Franciscan Library at Killiney.