Women's Writing and the Circulation of Ideas: Manuscript Publication in England, 1550-1800

by George L. Justice (Editor), Nathan Tinker (Editor)

Overview

Until recently it was widely believed that women in Renaissance and early modern England either did not write, or did not publish their work. It is now becoming clear that instead of using the emerging technology of print, many women writers circulated their works by hand. This study contributes to the discovery and re-evaluation of women writers by examining the writing and manuscript publication of key authors from 1550 to 1800, altering our understanding of the history of the book and early modern British literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521144032
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/24/2010
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

George Justice is Assistant Professor of English at Louisiana State University, specialising in eighteenth-century British literature. He is the author of The Manufacturers of Literature: Writing and the Literary Marketplace in Eighteenth-Century England (University of Delaware Press, 2001). He has published reviews and articles in Persuasions, The Age of Jonson, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, The Scriblerian, and The Year's Work in English Studies.

Nathan Tinker is completing his dissertation on Katherine Philips and 17th-century scribal culture at Fordham University, New York; he has published on Philips and the print history of her work in English Language Notes.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Note on contributors; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction George L. Justice; 2. The Countess of Pembroke's agency in print and scribal culture Margaret P. Hannay; 3. Circulating the Sidney–Pembroke psalter Debra Rienstra and Noel Kinnamon; 4. Creating female authorship in the early seventeenth century: Ben Jonson and Lady Mary Wroth Michael G. Brennan; 5. Medium and meaning in the manuscripts of Anne, Lady Southwell Victoria E. Burke; 6. The posthumous publication of women's manuscripts and the history of authorship Margaret J. M. Ezell; 7. Jane Barker's Jacobite writings Leigh A. Eicke; 8. Elizabeth Singer Rowe's tactical use of print and manuscript Kathryn R. King; 9. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her daughter: the changing use of manuscripts Isobel Grundy; 10. Suppression and censorship in late manuscript culture: Frances Burney's unperformed The Witlings George L. Justice; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...[a] stimulating collection..." Line Cottegines, Universite de Paris 3, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Renaissance Quarterly

"The collection...retains a sense that manuscript and print coexisted, as they continue to coexist...and provides a necessary corrective to views of women's literary history that neglect modes of literary and nonliterary self production that occurred beyond the printed page." - Emily Smith

From the Publisher