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.
For a young woman who had never attended university (as she of course could not at this time) to offer a translation from a classical language was both courageous and confident.
It was a long...
Textual Production
Jean Plaidy
The next year, 1955, saw the publication of JP
's Tudor novel Gay Lord Robert, about Elizabeth I
and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester
(whose title was initially Lord Robert, since he was...
Textual Production
Bryher
Bryher published six other historical novels: The Player's Boy (1953, reprinted by the Paris Press
of Ashfield, Massachusetts: set in the reign of Elizabeth
and featuring a boy who plays women's parts on stage),...
Textual Production
Dinah Mulock Craik
Dinah Mulock
published Elizabeth
and Victoria
: From a Woman's Point of View in the feminist Victoria Magazine.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. The Unkind Word and Other Stories. Hurst and Blackett.
68
Mitchell, Sally. Dinah Mulock Craik. Twayne.
134
Textual Production
Flora Shaw
In 1883, FS
made plans to write a history of England to be titled From Queen to Queen (Elizabeth
to Victoria
) but she never completed it.
Bell, E. Moberly. Flora Shaw. Constable.
43
Cumpston, Mary. “The Contribution to Ideas of Empire of Flora Shaw, Lady Lugard”. Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol.
5
, No. 1, pp. 64-75.
66
Textual Production
Isa Craig
Annual Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science began to appear under IC
's editorship, including some of the earliest reports of women's public, modern political speech in Britain.
For...
Textual Production
May Crommelin
MC
continued to publish during the second decade of the twentieth century; only some of this late output is mentioned here. She returned to Ulster for The Golden Bow, 1912, whose heroine has an...
Textual Production
Lady Jane Lumley
Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth
also translated a Greek tragedy at a precocious age, but her text does not survive. This non-survival and non-publication left it for Mary, Countess of Pembroke
, to become the first...
Textual Production
Rumer Godden
RG
wrote the life of an even more unusual literary figure in Gulbadan: Portrait of a Rose Princess at the Mughal Court, 1980. Gulbadan
(whose life-span coincides with that of Elizabeth I
, except...
Textual Production
Elinor James
In This Day Ought Never to be Forgotten, being the Proclamation Day for Queen Elizabeth, EJ
presented a role-model to the new King George
.
The date was that of Elizabeth's accession.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
McDowell, Paula. The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730. Clarendon.
308
Textual Production
Jean Plaidy
JP
's next two Victoria Holt novels appeared in 1966 and 1967: Menfreya (published in the USA as Menfreya in the Morning) and The King of the Castle, respectively. She then allowed Holt...
Textual Production
Diana Primrose
The only known work by the unidentified DP
, A Chaine of Pearle; or, a Memorial of . . . Queen Elizabeth (a sequence of ten poems) was entered in the Stationers' Register
; it...
Textual Production
Charlotte Lennox
The magazine was published through Newbery
, as by the author of The Female Quixote. Its launch was hailed by Charlotte Forman
(wrapped in the cloak of a male pseudonym) in the Public Ledger...
Textual Production
Edith Sitwell
ES
published a second biography of a queen: Fanfare for Elizabeth.
Fifoot, Richard. A Bibliography of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. Rupert Hart-Davis.
59-60
Textual Production
Elizabeth Oxenbridge, Lady Tyrwhit
Tyrwhit's collection of prayers is thought to date from the mid 1550s, and tradition suggests that it was written for the future Queen Elizabeth I
during her imprisonment by her sister Queen Mary
, but...