Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Queen Elizabeth I
-
Standard Name: Elizabeth I, Queen
Birth Name: Elizabeth Tudor
Royal Name: Elizabeth I
QEI
was a scholar by training and inclination (who wrote translations both as learning exercises and for recreation), as well as a writer in many genres and several languages. As monarch she wrote speeches, and all her life she wrote letters, poems, and prayers. (Some of these categories occasionally overlap.) Once her writing moved beyond the dutifulness of her youth, she had a pungent and forceful style both in prose and poetry.
LA
's preface denies the absurd notion that absolute gender equality might be feasible and advises women not to attempt to become inferior men. But she asserts, there is not an endowment, or propensity, or...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Maria van Schurman
Having laid out her case, AMS
proceeds to summarise and refute that of her Adversaries. These she classifies as the utilitarian (who value learning purely for its cash or career value) and the envious...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
A biographical lecture on Queen Elizabeth
(originally addressed to Working Women's College
students) is also reprinted. The lecture begins: Queen Elizabeth, when first she saw the light of day, was a great disappointment. She was...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Eva Figes
She considers the drama of ancient Greece and of the Renaissance, setting each in its historical context. After dealing with issues of religious belief, kingship, and the dead, she comes to that of women and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Emily Lawless
The subtitle gives the text the air of a historical account, dissimulating EL
's authorship: Being extracts from a diary kept in Ireland during the year 1599 by Mr. Henry Harvey, sometime secretary to Robert...
Scott, Mary, and Gae Holladay. The Female Advocate. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California.
iii
She looks farther into the past for examples than he does. Whereas Duncombe begins with Orinda (Katherine Philips
), MS
turns back to the Renaissance...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Norah Lofts
The house, Merravay, is seen playing a crucial role in the lives of a series of protagonists named in the chapter titles. They include the apprentice, the witch, the matriarch, the governess, ending after the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Scott
MS
's style is controlled but vigorous. She writes with fervour, whether laying out her Protestant reading of history (Queen Elizabeth
came to the throne when Long, hid beneath the specious mask of zeal...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho
, the patriotic heroism...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Melesina Trench
The title poem of Ellen comes from a story lately reported by newspapers. Other pieces (several of them ballads) deal with historical figures like Queen Elizabeth
, Cardinal Wolsey
, an anonymous monk, and the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sophia Lee
Both sisters become rivals in love to Queen Elizabeth
(following the popular account of romantic interest in Elizabeth's life). Matilda loves, and bears a daughter by, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester
. Lee's account of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Monica Furlong
She presents her subject as one of the nation's great institutions and as her own spiritual home. She relates its history from the beginnings, in the entwined careers of Thomas Cranmer
, Mary Tudor
...
CM
sought to memorialise the men whose struggles had secured the reputation of England as a nation of liberty at the time of the Civil War, while believing that oppression in England had begun when...
Travel
Margaret Hoby
They also made frequent winter visits to London: in 1600-1 in connection with their court case against William Eure
, again in April-June 1603 for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth
(a visit that was...
