The last twenty years have witnessed the rediscovery of a large number of women writers of the early modern period. This process of recovery has had a major impact on early modern studies for, by beginning to restore women to the history of the period, it provides new insight into the formative years of the modern era. This collection amply demonstrates the diversity as well as the literary and historical significance of early women's writing. It brings together studies by an impressive range of critics, including Elaine Hobby, Catherine Gallagher, Jane Spencer and Laura Brown, and examines the major works of five of the most important women writers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn and Anne Finch. The range of authors it covers, and the challenging critical work it presents, make Early Women Writers: 1600-1720 essential reading for students of feminist theory, Women's Studies and Cultural Studies, as well as for all those interested in the history and literature of the early modern period.

Chosen by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Until recently, history writing has been understood as a male enclave from which women were restricted, particularly prior to the nineteenth century. The first book to look at British women writers and their contributions to historiography during the long eighteenth century, British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820, asks why, rather than writing history that included their own sex, some women of this period chose to write the same kind of history as men—one that marginalized or excluded women altogether. But as Devoney Looser demonstrates, although British women's historically informed writings were not necessarily feminist or even female-focused, they were intimately involved in debates over and conversations about the genre of history. Looser investigates the careers of Lucy Hutchinson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Charlotte Lennox, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Austen and shows how each of their contributions to historical discourse differed greatly as a result of political, historical, religious, class, and generic affiliations. Adding their contributions to accounts of early modern writing refutes the assumption that historiography was an exclusive men's club and that fiction was the only prose genre open to women.

For centuries women have been marginalized and overlooked in American literary history. That injustice is corrected in this entertaining and provocative collection of 350 years of poetry and fiction by American women. From Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet to Margaret Fuller to Harriet Beecher Stowe, readers will encounter scores of lesser-known and forgotten writers who fully deserve to be rediscovered and enjoyed by new generations. Our famous women writers, including contemporary stars like Annie Proux and Jhumpa Lahiri, are showcased in their full literary context, offering an epic overview of the canon in one monumental, dazzling volume. This landmark anthology features the best work of our best American women, and was inspired and informed by the author's groundbreaking history celebrating women writers, A Jury of Her Peers.

Women's literary histories usually start in the later Middle Ages, but recent scholarship has shown that actually women were at the heart of the emergence of the English literary tradition. Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 focuses on the period before the so-called 'Barking Renaissance' of women's writing in the 12th century. By examining the surviving evidence of women's authorship, as well as the evidence of women's engagement with literary culture more widely, Diane Watt argues that early women's writing was often lost, suppressed, or deliberately destroyed. In particular she considers the different forms of male 'overwriting', to which she ascribes the multiple connotations of 'destruction', 'preservation', 'control' and 'suppression'. She uses the term to describe the complex relationship between male authors and their female subjects to capture the ways in which texts can attempt to control and circumscribe female autonomy. Written by one of the leading experts in medieval women's writing, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 examines women's literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as letters and hagiographies from the 8th and 9th centuries. Diane Watt provides a much-needed look at women's writing in the early medieval period that is crucial to understanding women's literary history more broadly.

Authors include Anne Bradstreet, Mary White Rowlandson, Sarah Kemble Knight, Elizabeth Sampson Sullivan Ashbridge, Mercy Otis Warren, Abigail Smith Adams, Judith Sargent Murray, Phillis Wheatley, Susanna Haswell Rowson, Jarena Lee, Eliza Southgate Bowne, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Sarah Moore Grimke, Sojourner Truth, Caroline Stansbury Kirkland, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sara Willis Eldredge Farrington Parton (Fanny Fern), Harriet Farley Donlevy, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Louisa May Alcott.

The last twenty years have witnessed the rediscovery of a large number of women writers of the early modern period. This process of recovery has had a major impact on early modern studies for, by beginning to restore women to the history of the period, it provides new insight into the formative years of the modern era. This collection amply demonstrates the diversity as well as the literary and historical significance of early women's writing. It brings together studies by an impressive range of critics, including Elaine Hobby, Catherine Gallagher, Jane Spencer and Laura Brown, and examines the major works of five of the most important women writers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn and Anne Finch. The range of authors it covers, and the challenging critical work it presents, make Early Women Writers: 1600-1720 essential reading for students of feminist theory, Women's Studies and Cultural Studies, as well as for all those interested in the history and literature of the early modern period.