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

Katherine Philips was a major seventeenth-century poet and playwright who became widely known for her innovative use of Donnean poetics to express passionate female friendship, her occasional verses on private friends and public figures, and her moral and political acuity. She had the mixed fortune of being enshrined in posthumous volumes that both celebrated and misrepresented her achievement. Fortunately recent research has clarified our understanding of who Philips was and how she conducted her literary career.

The works included in this volume constitute Delarivier Manley's early oeuvre, written in the seventeenth century. They comprise one epistolary novella, Letters Written [sic] by Mrs Manley; one commendatory poem 'To the Author of Agnes de Castro'; one comedy, The Lost Lover, or The Jealous Husband, one tragedy, The Royal Mischief; and two commemorative poems, 'Melpomeme: The Tragick Muse' and 'Thalia: The Comick Muse'. In the light of new readings of Delarivier Manley's early work, this volume demonstrates her important contribution to the literary and theatrical milieu of the late seventeenth century.

This volume reproduces twenty short texts written by named and unnamed women in the years 1641-1700. These texts, selected and introduced by various hands, are grouped in thematic clusters for the reader's ease - poetry on religion, on politics, on society, on domestic/social affairs and on mourning. The poems are arranged chronologically within each cluster. The volume closes with Anne Wentworth's pamphlet England's Spiritual Pill.

Elizabeth Cellier, the scandalous celebrity known as the 'Popish midwife', became the focus of a large number of pamphlets in 1680: accounts of her two trials, her self-vindication, Malice Defeated, her opponent Thomas Dangerfield's rejoinder, and various anonymous satiric attacks against her. She was tried twice: the first time for the more serious charge of treason, and the second for libel, for publishing Malice Defeated. She was acquitted the first time, but found guilty the second, though her punishment was to be pilloried, not executed. She reemerges as the author of tracts on midwifery, proposing to James II the establishment of a professional guild of midwives. Her writings exhibit her remarkable determination to publish her accusations of judicial torture and her advocacy of the licensing of midwives as professional women, as well as exemplifying the importance of the printing press for enabling women to participate in the political public sphere.

Katherine Philips was a major seventeenth-century poet and playwright who became widely known for her innovative use of Donnean poetics to express passionate female friendship, her occasional verses on private friends and public figures, and her moral and political acuity. She had the mixed fortune of being enshrined in posthumous volumes that both celebrated and misrepresented her achievement. Fortunately recent research has clarified our understanding of who Philips was and how she conducted her literary career.

This volume makes available for the first time the complete surviving works of the London printer-author Elinor James (c.1645-1719). Uniquely in the history of early modern women, James wrote, printed and distributed more than ninety pamphlets and broadsides addressing political, religious and commercial concerns. Written over a period of 35 years, her works provide us with a running commentary on the major national events of a tumultuous period such as the Revolution of 1688, the Union of England and Scotland in 1707, and the Jacobite uprisings in 1715-16. During her lifetime, England saw the succession of six different monarchs. James petitioned all of them and claimed to have obtained audiences with three. In 1689 she was gaoled in Newgate prison, accused of disseminating seditious material condemning William III for accepting the English crown. James's texts address a staggeringly broad range of concerns. She petitioned Parliament concerning legislation affecting the printing trades and petitioned fellow printers concerning labour relations in London printing houses. She petitioned City authorities on issues such as the enforcement of bylaws or who to vote for in City and parliamentary elections. It is hoped that by making available all of James's known works, this volume will inspire the collective efforts of scholars from many different disciplines to decipher her references to contemporary events, issues and persons, as well as prompting further discoveries of as yet unidentified works.