Margaret More Roper may be remembered as the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, but she was much, much more. Well-educated, loyal, passionately pious, and a skilled writer and translator, Margaret inspired a generation and proved to Tudor England and beyond just how accomplished a woman could be. Her life provides a window into the turbulent times of the English Reformation and life at the court of King Henry VIII. In this biography, Margaret is presented in her own right and given the attention and acknowledgement she so richly deserves.

This book represents the most comprehensive study of women's letters and letter-writing during the early modern period so far undertaken, and acts as an important corrective to traditional ways of reading and discussing letters as private, elite, male, and non-political. Based on over 3,000 manuscript letters, it shows that letter-writing was a larger and more socially diversified area of female activity than has been hitherto assumed. In that letters constitute the largest body of extant sixteenth-century women's writing, the book initiates a reassessment of women's education and literacy in the period. As indicators of literacy, letters yield physical evidence of rudimentary writing activity and abilities, document 'higher' forms of female literacy, and highlight women's mastery of formal rhetorical and epistolary conventions. The book also stresses that letters are unparalleled as intimate and immediate records of family relationships, and as media for personal and self-reflective forms of female expression. Read as documents that inscribe social and gender relations, letters shed light on the complex range of women's personal relationships, as female power and authority fluctuated, negotiated on an individual basis. Furthermore, correspondence highlights the important political roles played by early modern women. Female letter-writers were integral in cultivating and maintaining patronage and kinship networks; they were active as suitors for crown favour, and operated as political intermediaries and patrons in their own right, using letters to elicit influence. Letters thus help to locate differing forms of female power within the family, locality and occasionally on the wider political stage, and offer invaluable primary evidence from which to reconstruct the lives of early modern women.

"... a nuanced, carefully argued work that reveals how women writers of the Renaissance, whether upper-class aristocrats close to court, daughters of successful merchants, Protestants, or Catholics, are inevitably affected by the gender biases that infuse all levels of Renaissance society and letters." -- Sixteenth Century Journal "... quite effective at developing a critical vocabulary for analyzing the formal traits of early modern women's writing." -- Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature From the perspectives of feminism, Marxism, sociology, and cultural semiotics, Louise Schleiner examines both familiar and obscure Tudor and Stuart women writers in a comprehensive study of those women who managed to go beyond translations or diaries and find a more individual voice in their public texts.

This volume includes leading scholarship on five writers active in the first half of the sixteenth century: Margaret More Roper, Katherine Parr, Anne Askew, Mildred Cooke Cecil and Anne Cooke Bacon. The essays represent a range of theoretical approaches and provide valuable insights into the religious, social, economic and political contexts essential for understanding these writers' texts. Scholars examine the significance of Margaret More Roper's translations and letters in the contexts of humanism, family relationships and changing cultural forces; the contributions of Katherine Parr and Anne Askew to Reformation discourses and debates; and the material presence of Mildred Cooke Cecil and Anne Cooke Bacon in the intellectual, religious and political life of their time. The introduction surveys the development of the field as an interdisciplinary project involving literature, history, classics, religion and cultural studies.

This volume examines the relationship between gender and form in early modern women’s writing by exploring women’s debts to and appropriations of different literary genres and offering practical suggestions for the teaching of women’s texts.

During the seventeenth century, in response to political and social upheavals such as the English Civil Wars, women produced writings in both manuscript and print. This volume represents recent scholarship that has uncovered new texts as well as introduced new paradigms to further our understanding of women's literary history during this period.

This volume includes leading scholarship on five writers active in the first half of the sixteenth century: Margaret More Roper, Katherine Parr, Anne Askew, Mildred Cooke Cecil and Anne Cooke Bacon. The essays represent a range of theoretical approaches and provide valuable insights into the religious, social, economic and political contexts essential for understanding these writers' texts. The introduction surveys the development of the field as an interdisciplinary project involving literature, history, classics, religion and cultural studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 brings together new work by scholars across the globe, from some of the founding figures in early modern women's writing to those early in their careers and defining the field now. It investigates how and where women gained access to education, how they developed their literary voice through varied genres including poetry, drama, and letters, and how women cultivated domestic and technical forms of knowledge from recipes and needlework to medicines and secret codes. Chapters investigate the ways in which women's writing was an integral part of the intellectual culture of the period, engaging with male writers and traditions, while also revealing the ways in which women's lives and writings were often distinctly different, from women prophetesses to queens, widows, and servants. It explores the intersections of women writing in English with those writing in French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, in Europe and in New England, and argues for an archipelagic understanding of women's writing in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England. Finally, it reflects on—and challenges—the methodologies which have developed in, and with, the field: book and manuscript history, editing, digital analysis, premodern critical race studies, network theory, queer theory, and feminist theory. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 captures the most innovative work on early modern women's writing in English at present.

The Tudor era (1485-1603) was one of the most culturally significant periods in history. Under three generations of Tudor rulers, the era witnessed the advent of humanism, the birth of the Reformation, and the rise of the British Empire. The literature of the period is marked by complexity of thought and form and reflects the political, religious, and cultural changes of the era. This reference book surveys the literature of Tudor England. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for nearly 100 authors who wrote between 1485 and 1603. Some figures covered are widely taught, such as Shakespeare, Donne, and Spenser. Others are less well known, such as Edward Fairfax and Abraham Fraunce. The work includes entries for notable women writers of the period, many of whom have been neglected until recent years. Also included are entries for continental writers such as Ariosto, Tasso, Calvin, and Erasmus, whose writings were influential in England. Entries are written by expert contributors and contain valuable bibliographies of primary and secondary sources. Included are entries for nearly 100 people who wrote between 1485 and 1603. The entries are written by expert contributors and are arranged alphabetically to facilitate use. Some of the authors profiled are major canonical figures, such as Shakespeare, Spenser, and Donne. But the volume also includes a significant number of entries for women writers, whose work has been unjustly disregarded until recent years. While most of the authors were from England, the volume contains entries on figures such as Erasmus, who, though born in another country, wrote important works in England, and on writers such as Machiavelli, Calvin, Ariosto, and Tasso, whose works were almost immediately adopted, translated, or otherwise made part of Tudor culture. Each entry provides a brief biography, which is followed by a discussion of major works and themes, a review of the author's critical reception, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

Focusing on the unusual learning and schooling of women in early modern England, this study explores how and why women wrote, the myriad forms their alphabets could assume, and the shape which vernacular literacy acquired in their hands. Elizabeth Mazzola argues that early modern women's writings often challenged the lessons of their male teachers, since they were designed to conceal rather than reveal women's learning and schooling. Employed by early modern women with great learning and much art, such difficult or ’resistant’ literacy organized households and administrative offices alike, and transformed the broader history of literacy in the West. Chapters treat writers like Jane Sharp, Anne Southwell, Jane Seager, Martha Moulsworth, Elizabeth Tudor, and Katherine Parr alongside images of women writers presented by Shakespeare and Sidney. Managing women's literacy also concerned early modern statesmen and secretaries, writing masters and grammarians, and Mazzola analyzes how both the emerging vernacular and a developing bureaucratic state were informed by these contests over women's hands.