Women Writing the English Republic, 1625–1681

Katharine Gillespie author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:7th Apr '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Women Writing the English Republic, 1625–1681 cover

The first book-length study of the contributions that women writers made to the social, cultural and philosophical milieux of seventeenth-century English republicanism.

Scholars have fiercely debated the causes of the English Civil Wars and the rise of anti-monarchical and republican thought a century before the American Revolution. This ambitious and highly original book is the first to argue that women played a significant role in formulating and enacting English republican precepts. Even as feminists contend that republicanism's division of the private from the public sphere excluded women from political power, Gillespie demonstrates how seventeenth-century Englishwomen articulated republicanism's key insight: meaningful action, political or otherwise, does and should take place outside the purview of government, in spheres that not only include women, but that women helped construct. Drawing on the works of six women writers of the period, the book examines their writings and explores the key themes and concepts that they build upon.

'… Gillespie has provided an invaluable resource not just for ongoing debates about gender and the legacy of the English civil wars, but also for some of our deepest and most important questions about political change.' Erin Murphy, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal

ISBN: 9781107149120

Dimensions: 235mm x 158mm x 25mm

Weight: 670g

362 pages