Women Writing History in Early Modern England

Megan Matchinske author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:16th Aug '12

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

This paperback is available in another edition too:

Women Writing History in Early Modern England cover

This book investigates and documents fascinating accounts written by seventeenth-century Englishwomen, which explore the shifting relationships between past and future.

Throughout the seventeenth century, scores of Englishwomen took up the banner of history, exploring in their accounts the shifting relationships between past and future, between what had happened and what could happen. This book focuses on this dynamic exchange, asking us to look seriously at the ends of history.In 1603 an English gentlewoman, Elizabeth Grymeston, composed for her young son a series of meditations - meditations that would offer posthumous advice and reflection on everything from the nature of sin to the limits of royal authority. Six months later Grymeston was dead and her words memorialized not just for a small boy but also for an English audience eager for moral edification and enlightenment. As one of the first writers of the mother's legacy to appear in England, Grymeston looked to history to find her answers. Using life experience as her witness, she drew immediate and powerful connections between yesterday's actions and tomorrow's possibilities. She was not alone - throughout the seventeenth century, scores of Englishwomen did likewise, exploring in their own 'histories' the shifting relationships between past and future. This book focuses on this dynamic exchange, asking us to look seriously at the ends of history.

Review of the hardback: 'Not only is Women Writing History in Early Modern England an impressive contribution to the scholarship on women's historical writing in the early modern period; it constitutes an important theoretical intervention on the relationship between ethics and historiography, and on our own relationship to the past that is the subject of our scholarship. This is a book that scholars of both literature and history will read with great profit.' Literature and History

ISBN: 9781107406629

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 13mm

Weight: 340g

252 pages