Anna Maria van Schurman

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Standard Name: Schurman, Anna Maria van
Birth Name: Anna Maria van Schurman
Nickname: The Tenth Muse
AMS , living in seventeenth-century Utrecht, became not only a living proof of women's talents and capacity for education, as equal to those of men, but also a public advocate for opportunities for women to develop their God-given capacity. Later, as a leader of the religious sect of the Labadists , she renounced worldly learning and wrote only devotional works. Throughout her life she wrote letters in which she records the life of her mind and the development of her opinions.
Photograph of a painting of Anna Maria van Schurman by Jan Lievens. She is seated at a desk with an inkwell and quill on it, and the book she holds appears to have blank pages: so she is shown as a writer. She is wearing a large, dark, fur-trimmed cloak over a white chemise with a low V neck; her dark hair is partly pulled back in a bun encircled with a strand of pearls, with the rest of her hair falling down around her shoulders. National Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Bathsua Makin
BM 's brother-in-law John Pell called her a woman of great acquaintance.
Teague, Frances. Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning. Bucknell University Press.
82
She was a lifelong friend of diarist and antiquarian Sir Simonds D'Ewes , who had been at her father's school, and of...
Friends, Associates Bathsua Makin
She was also part of an international network of scholarly women with connections to Elizabeth of Bohemia , which included Anna Maria van Schurman , feminist writer Marie le Jars de Gournay , educator Marie du Moulin
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Elstob
EE 's dedication to Queen Anne asserts her awareness of being a female pioneer. Another part of her paratext, the preface, defends women's learning and defies both those who set up for Censurers and those...
Textual Features Elizabeth Burnet
This journal includes much philosophical writing. EB 's detailed critique of the mystic Antoinette de Bourignon (correspondent of Anna Maria van Schurman ) embodies an ingenious rational explanation of enthusiasm or belief in a divine...
Textual Features Elizabeth Elstob
EE 's preliminary list of names suggests considerable research work: it includes several ancient or Anglo-Saxon women as well as Mary Astell , Anne Bacon , Katherine Chidley (as the pamphlet antagonist of Thomas Edwards
Textual Features Sylvia Kantaris
This volume, through its title, invokes a whole tradition of women's poetry. Sappho was the first to bear the honorific nickname of tenth muse, which was later freely bestowed on writing women (like Anna Maria van Schurman
Textual Production Anna Hume
The author's name appears respectfully as Mris [i.e. Mistress] Anna Hume. The main title-page prints Love, Chastitie, and Death one below the other and brackets them. The Triumph of Chastitie and The...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary More
MM believes that she is saying something new and not commonly known when she argues that male power over women has grown gradually by unjust laws. She sets out by quoting from and commenting on...

Timeline

1691: William Walsh published anonymously A Dialogue...

Writing climate item

1691

William Walsh published anonymously A Dialogue Concerning Women, Being a Defence of the Sex, Written to Eugenia.

1705: The German-born entomologist Maria Sibilla...

Writing climate item

1705

The German-born entomologist Maria Sibilla Merian (1647-1717) published at Amsterdam her handsome folio titled in Latin Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium and illustrated by herself.
Her second name is variously spelled. The British Library Catalogue records Sibylla...

Texts

Schurman, Anna Maria van. Dissertatio, de ingenii mulienbris ad doctrinam, & meliores litteras aptitudine. Editor Beverwyck, Johan van, ex officina Elseviriana, 1641.
Schurman, Anna Maria van. Eukleria seu melioris partis electio. ex officina Cornelii van der Meulen, 1685.
Schurman, Anna Maria van. The Learned Maid; or, Whether a Maid may be a Scholar?. Translator Barksdale, Clement, John Redmayne, 1659.