Appendix 4:
Biographical and Textual Notes on Authors

Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645):
Lanyer was the daughter of a court musician, Baptista Bassano, who had emigrated to England with his wife Margaret from Venice, Italy. According to records of a visit she made to the astrologer Simon Forman in 1597, Lanyer had been a favorite in the court of Elizabeth I. She was the mistress of Henry Carey, first Baron Hunsdon, but when she became pregnant she was married to Captain Alphonso Lanyer, another court musician. Because of her family’s and her husband’s occupation, Lanyer was always in a precarious economic and social position, and she found herself competing for court patents and privileges throughout her life.

Lanyer’s volume, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), was the first book of original poetry by an Englishwoman to be published in the seventeenth century. Our copy text is Huntington Library STC 15227.5 (HN 62139). “To the Virtuous Reader” is taken from pages f3r–f3v and “Eve’s Apology” is taken from pages C4v–D2r. For a complete modern edition of Lanyer’s works, see The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer, ed. Susanne Woods (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Dorothy Leigh (d. in or before 1616):
Leigh was the wife of Ralph Leigh of Cheshire and the mother of three sons, to whom her advice in The Mother’s Blessing is addressed. In addition to many of the more conventional Protestant positions espoused in her treatise, she also expresses more radical views, such as advocating women’s emotional rights in marriage and championing female learning.

Leigh’s treatise was dedicated to Princess Elizabeth, the queen of Bohemia, and was first published in 1616. It went through twenty-three editions in the seventeenth century, a testament to its popularity. Our copy text is Bodleian Library (80 R 30(2) Th.), STC 15402. The excerpts we have selected are taken from pages 16–17, 27–43, and 158–169. For a complete modern edition of The Mother’s Blessing, see Women’s Writing in Stuart England: The Mothers’ Legacies of Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Joscelin, and Elizabeth Richardson, ed. Sylvia Brown (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 1999), 3–87.

Rachel Speght (b. 1597?):
Speght was a polemicist and poet who was the daughter of the Calvinist minister John Speght of London. In her tract A Muzzle for Melastomus (1617) she became the first Englishwoman to contribute to the vigorous Jacobean pamphlet war over women’s place and role. In 1621 she also published a long poetic meditation on death, Mortalities Memorandum, together with an allegorical dream-vision poem, The Dreame. Her writings indicate that she had acquired a classical education, including Latin and some training in logic and rhetoric.

A Muzzle for Melastomus was published in London in 1617. Our copy text is Huntington Library (HN 22250), STC 23058. For a complete modern edition of Speght’s tract, see The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght, ed. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1–27.

Esther Sowernam (fl. 1617):
The name “Esther Sowernam” is a pseudonym, and the actual identity of this author remains unknown. There is some debate as to whether the author was a female polemicist or a man taking a women’s viewpoint as part of a rhetorical exercise. Sowernam’s witty treatise is notable for its use of logic, wordplay, and biblical interpretation.

Sowernam’s tract Esther Hath Hanged Haman was published in 1617 in London. Our copy text is Huntington Library (HN 69499), STC 22974. The excerpts we have selected are taken from pages 1–11, 25–26, 33–35, and 46–48. For a modern edition of Sowernam’s tract, see Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540–1640, ed. Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 217–43.

Joan Sharp (fl. 1617):
The name “Joan Sharp” is most likely a pseudonym, and the actual identity of this author remains unknown. Though “A Defense of Women” is clearly signed “Joan Sharp” in the 1617 edition, it is possible that the poem’s author and Esther Sowernam, the author of the longer pamphlet Esther Hath Hanged Haman to which Sharp’s poem is appended, are one and the same.

Sharp’s poem was published in the volume Esther Hath Hanged Haman in 1617. Our copy text is Huntington Library (HN 69499), STC 22974. “A Defense of Women” is taken from pages 49–53. For a modern edition of Sharp’s poem, see First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578–1799, ed. Moira Ferguson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 80–83.

Elizabeth Clinton (1574?–1630?):
Clinton was the daughter of Sir Henry Knevitt of Wiltshire and the wife of Thomas, Lord Clinton, who succeeded his father as third earl of Lincoln in 1616. A member of a devout Protestant family, she had eighteen children with her husband, at least nine of which survived infancy. Her treatise on breastfeeding titled The Countess of Lincoln’s Nursery (1622) is her only known work.

Clinton’s treatise was published in London in 1622. Our copy text is British Library (Shelfmark c.40.d.30), STC 5432. For a facsimile edition of Clinton’s treatise, see Mother’s Advice Books, in The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works, part 2, vol. 8, selected and introduced by Betty S. Travitsky (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).

Lady Anne Southwell (1571–1636):
Southwell was the daughter of Thomas Harris, a Member of Parliament, and Elizabeth Pomeroy. On 24 June 1594 she married Thomas Southwell, with whom she moved to Ireland as part of the colonial effort surrounding the plantation of Munster. Through the Southwell family, Lady Anne gained many literary and courtly connections, including that of poet and Catholic martyr Robert Southwell. When Sir Thomas Southwell died in 1626, Lady Anne quickly remarried. She and her new husband, Captain Henry Sibthorpe, lived together in Clerkenwell, and later in Acton, west of London. Southwell was a royalist supporter and a Calvinist conformist (she criticized both Roman Catholics and radical Protestants).

The poems included in this anthology were written in Southwell’s manuscript commonplace book, a compilation of poems and prose writings by Southwell and other authors. The manuscript is now in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and it is dated 1626 on the first page. However, both poems were probably written earlier, around the time of her first marriage. Our copy text is Folger Shakespeare Library V. b. 198. “All Married Men Desire to Have Good Wives” is taken from folio 16r and “An Elegy Written by the Lady A.S. to the Countess of Londonderry” is taken from folios 19v-20v. For a modern edition and transcription of the entire commonplace book, see The Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book: Folger MS. V.b.198, ed. Jean Klene, MRTS 147 (Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997).

Alice Sutcliffe (fl. 1624–1634):
Sutcliffe was most likely the daughter of Luke Woodhouse, of Kimberley in Norfolk. Very little is known about her early life, but it seems that she was associated with the Buckingham family through the household of Katherine, duchess of Buckingham, who was the widow of George Villiers. It is likely that Sutcliffe was a Catholic or sympathetic to the Catholic cause. In 1624, after leaving the Buckingham household, Alice married John Sutcliffe of Yorkshire, a squire to James I who later became groom of the privy chamber under Charles I. They had a daughter, Susan, but nothing else is known about her, nor is there any information about the date and place of Sutcliffe’s death.

Sutcliffe’s Meditations of Man’s Mortality, or, A Way to True Blessedness was first published in London in 1633 and appeared in a second “enlarged” edition in 1634. The volume consists of six biblical prose meditations and the poem “Of Our Loss by Adam, and Our Gain by Christ” included in our anthology. Our copy text is the 1634 edition, Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 23447. “Of Our Loss by Adam, and Our Gain by Christ” is taken from pages 141–200. For a modern edition of the poem, see Women Poets of the Renaissance, ed. Marion Wynne-Davies (New York: Routledge, 1999), 239–254.

Margaret Cavendish (1623?–1673):
Cavendish was born in Essex into a wealthy royalist family; she was the daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Lucas. In 1643 she became a maid-of-honor to Queen Henrietta Maria, and she followed her into exile to Paris the following year. While in France, she met her future husband, William Cavendish, and they were married in 1645. With her husband, she remained on the Continent during the English Civil Wars. Both returned with Charles II after the Restoration, but when William failed to obtain a desired court appointment, the couple retired to the country. Margaret’s wide-ranging published works include plays, poems, letters, autobiographical and biographical prose, short fiction, and scientific treatises.

Cavendish’s first publication, Poems and Fancies, appeared in 1653. Revised editions of the volume were published in 1664 and 1668. Our copy text is the 1653 edition, Huntington Library, Wing N869 (HN 120141). “Poets Have Most Pleasure in this Life” is taken from pages 152–53. For a modern transcription of Poems and Fancies, see Renaissance Women Online, Women Writers Project, Brown University, http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/wwoentry.html.

Katherine Philips (1632–1664):
Philips was the daughter of John Fowler, a prosperous cloth merchant. When she was fifteen, she moved to Wales with her mother, who had married Sir Richard Philips of Pembrokeshire. In August 1648, at the age of sixteen, Katherine married James Philips, a prominent Welsh landowner and later a Member of Parliament, and she lived the rest of her life in Wales. Despite her husband’s moderate support of Cromwell’s government and her own puritan family connections, Philips remained a royalist sympathizer, a position evident in many of her poems. During her lifetime, she was well known for her translations of French dramatic works as well as for her poetry.

An unauthorized edition of Philips’s Poems was published in 1664. The authorized, folio edition that appeared posthumously in 1667 contains an additional forty-one poems as well as several translations. Our copy text is the 1667 edition, Duke University Library (E qP554PB), Wing P2033. “To Antenor, on a Paper of Mine” is taken from page 47. For a complete modern edition of Philips’s poetry, see The Collected Works of Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda, ed. Patrick Thomas (Stump Cross, Essex: Stump Cross Books, 1990).

Mary Roper (fl. 1660–1670):
Very little is known about the author of The Sacred History (1669), and what we do know is largely derived from the text itself. It seems clear that Roper was an ardent royalist supporter and Anglican, possibly from a Kentish family. The dedicatory epistle to the manuscript is addressed to Queen Catherine de Braganza, wife of Charles II, but Roper herself seems to have been relatively lacking in wealth or status. Like Margaret Cavendish, she displays concern in her work for the poor treatment of royalist sympathizers during the English Civil Wars.

The poems included in this anthology were written in The Sacred History, a manuscript verse paraphrase of the Genesis narrative, now housed at Leeds University. The manuscript is dated 10 March 1669. Our copy text is Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Special Collections MS. Lt q 2. “The Creation of Man” is taken from pages 11–15 and “Man’s Shameful Fall” is taken from pages 16–23. An excerpt from “Man’s Shameful Fall” and from later portions of the manuscript can be found in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Poetry, ed. Jill Seal Millman and Gillian Wright (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 153–68, esp. 157–58. The complete text of “The Creation of Man” and “Man’s Shameful Fall” appear in print for the first time in our anthology.

Dorothy Calthorpe (1648–1693?):
Very little is known with certainty about Dorothy Calthorpe, but she was probably the daughter of James Calthorpe and Dorothy Reynolds of Ampton, County Suffolk. It seems that she never married, but she did leave more than £1000 in her will for the building and maintenance of an almshouse.

Calthorpe’s autograph manuscript in which “A Description of the Garden of Eden” appears was written between 1672 and 1684, though it is impossible to date the individual texts within the volume more precisely. The volume, now housed at Yale University, also includes a few poems and a romance about her father and grandfather’s adventures. Our copy text is Beinecke Library, Yale University, Call Number: Osborn b421. “A Description of the Garden of Eden” is taken from folios 7v-14r. The transcription from the original manuscript was done by Julie A. Eckerle. Calthorpe’s poem appears in print for the first time in our anthology.

Bathsua Makin (b. 1600, d. in or after 1675):
Makin was the eldest daughter of Henry Reginald, a schoolmaster in London. Spending her early years at her father’s school, Makin quickly acquired a reputation for her learning. Her broad scholarly interests included medicine and foreign languages, and she was highly regarded as a teacher; her pupils included Princess Elizabeth (daughter of Charles I) and Lucy Hastings. In 1622 she married Richard Makin, and together they had eight children. In the 1670s, Bathsua opened a school for gentlewomen in Tottenham Court Road with the author and educator Mark Lewis.

Makin’s treatise An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen was published in London in 1673. It is the first treatise published by an Englishwoman to defend women’s educational abilities. Our copy text is Folger Library, Wing M309. For a modern edition of Makin’s treatise, see Frances Teague, Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1998).

Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681):
Hutchinson was the daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, lieutenant of the Tower of London, and his wife, Lucy, who encouraged her daughter’s early education. In 1638, Lucy married John Hutchinson and together they were strong supporters of the Parliamentarian and Puritan causes during the English Civil Wars. After the Restoration and her husband’s death, Hutchinson published a biography of her husband, in part to clear his name from charges of treason. Her other published works, in addition to her epic biblical poem Order and Disorder, include a translation of Lucretius’s De rerum natura and a treatise defending Calvinist doctrine.

The first five cantos of Order and Disorder were published anonymously in 1679, though a significant amount of internal and external evidence makes it clear that Hutchinson (and not Sir Allen Apsley to whom it was first attributed) is the author. A much longer version of the epic poem with a total of twenty cantos exists in a manuscript now housed in the Beinecke Library at Yale University (Osborn Collection fb 100). We include the first five cantos of Order and Disorder in our anthology both because this represents the complete text of the 1679 version and because these are the cantos that discuss the Fall most directly. Our copy text is the 1679 printed edition, Huntington Library, Wing A3594 (HN 147127), which appears to represent Hutchinson’s final wishes for the first five cantos. For a modern edition of all twenty cantos of the poem, see Lucy Hutchinson: Order and Disorder, ed. David Norbrook (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).

Sarah Fyge (1670–1723):
Fyge was the daughter of the London physician and city councilman Thomas Fyge and his wife, Mary Beacham. Fyge wrote poetry from a young age, but her father objected to her writings and subsequently sent her to live with relatives in Buckinghamshire. She married the attorney Edward Field, apparently against her will. After his death, she married Rev. Thomas Egerton, a marriage that was known to be notoriously unhappy by Fyge’s contemporaries, in part because she seems to have been in love with another man — Henry Pierce, an attorney’s clerk and an associate of her first husband. Both of Fyge’s marriages were childless; her second husband died in 1720.

When Fyge was only fourteen years old, she wrote and published her verse satire The Female Advocate (1686). This poem was written as a response to Robert Gould’s very popular, misogynist verse satire, Love Given O’re, published in 1682. The first version of The Female Advocate contained errors, and it was reprinted in a second edition in 1687. Our copy text is the 1687 edition, William Andrews Clark Library, Shelfmark PR3499.G3 L8f*. A portion of The Female Advocate can be found in First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578–1799, ed. Ferguson, 154–67.

Jane Barker (1652–1732):
Barker was the daughter of Thomas Barker and Anne Connock. She grew up in Wilsthorpe, where she taught herself medicine, Latin, and poetry. After her father died in 1681, she moved to London and converted to Catholicism. She was strongly committed to the Stuart cause throughout her life, and by 1689 she had decided to follow the Stuart court into exile to France. She returned to England to take up management of her family’s estate and care for her grandnieces, but she returned to France in 1727 and died there, never having married or had children. Her career as a writer lasted over half a century, and her writings include epistles, satires, religious dialogues, a heroic romance, translations, and autobiographical prose fiction in addition to poetry.

A collection of Barker’s coterie verse was published in 1688 as Part I of Poetical Recreations (Part II, as indicated on the title page, consisted of poetry written by “several gentlemen of the universities, and others”). A 272-page manuscript collection of Barker’s poetry titled “Poems on several occasions” is housed at Oxford University (Magdalen College, Oxford, MS. 343). Our copy text is the 1688 printed edition, British Library, Wing B770. “A Farewell to Poetry, With a Long Digression on Anatomy” is taken from pages 99–104. For a modern edition of selections from the Magdalen manuscript, see The Poems of Jane Barker: The Magdalen Manuscript, ed. Kathryn King (Oxford: Magdalen College, 1998).

Mary Astell (1666–1731):
Astell was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and was the daughter of coal merchant Peter Astell and his wife Mary, who was a member of a prominent Catholic family. Her family was staunchly royalist during the English Civil Wars and later supported James II in opposition to William and Mary. Astell grew up in prosperous surroundings and was well-educated in philosophy and theology; she later developed additional interests in science and mathematics. It seems that she moved to London around the time of the Glorious Revolution (1687–1688). During her life, she debated philosophy with many of her contemporaries, including John Norris and John Locke, and defended women’s right to education and an intellectual life. Astell, who was never married, wrote political treatises, religious tracts, and poetry in addition to A Serious Proposal. She suffered from poor health throughout her life; after developing breast cancer and undergoing a mastectomy, she died in May of 1731.

A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I was first published in London in 1694. It was an instant success, and it went through four more editions by 1701. In 1697, Astell published a sequel to her treatise. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II shifted focus from the religious retreat proposed in the first volume to contemporary philosophical debate. In our anthology, we include A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I in its entirely. Our copy text is the first edition of 1694, Yale University Library, Wing A4062. For a modern edition of both parts of the treatise, see Mary Astell: A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1997).

Mary, Lady Chudleigh (1656–1710):
Chudleigh was the eldest child of Richard Lee of Devon and Mary Sydenham. In 1674 she married George Chudleigh of Devon, and together they had six children, though only two of them survived to adulthood. She spent most of her early life near Exeter, where she read and wrote poetry from a young age. As an adult, she had literary connections with John Dryden and Mary Astell, John Norris, and Elizabeth Thomas. Chudleigh’s surviving works include verse in a range of Restoration poetic forms and several essays.

The Ladies’ Defense was originally published in London in 1701 anonymously (the title page specifies that it was “Written by a LADY”), though it was later attributed to Chudleigh. In this verse dialogue, Chudleigh responds to a wedding sermon given in 1699 by John Sprint (and later published in 1709 as The Bride-Woman’s Counselor) that advocated the absolute submission of wives to their husbands. The Ladies’ Defense was also reprinted as part of the 1709 edition of her collected poetry. Our copy text is the first edition of 1701, Folger Shakespeare Library, shelfmark PR 3346 C7 L3 Cage. For a modern edition of Chudleigh’s writing, see The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh, ed. Margaret J.M. Ezell (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).