Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Katherine Parr
-
Standard Name: Parr, Katherine
Birth Name: Katherine Parr
Pseudonym: K. P.
Married Name: Katherine Borough
Married Name: Katherine Neville
Titled: Katherine Neville, Lady Latimer
Royal Name: Queen Katherine
Used Form: Catherine Parr
KP
's interventions in national and ecclesiastical history in the earlier sixteenth century, at the time of the Reformation (which were more far-reaching than has often been recognised), rested on her skill in writing and her faith in the educational power of reading. She produced (besides letters) religious writings: prayers and meditations.
"Katherine Parr" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Catherine_Parr_from_NPG.jpg/808px-Catherine_Parr_from_NPG.jpg.
Brought up both by her teachers and by Katherine Parr
in evangelical Protestantism, she developed into a pragmatic Anglican
, probably both by conviction and by informed political choice. She exercised her diplomatic skills to...
Education
Queen Elizabeth I
Elizabeth was given a full Renaissance education, latterly under the supervision of her stepmother Katherine Parr
. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, however, insists on the importance in her life of the upper-class...
Education
Elizabeth Oxenbridge Lady Tyrwhit
As an adult she belonged to a group around Queen Katherine Parr
which amounted to a a women's bible-study group.
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Oxenbridge Lady Tyrwhit
He came from a family which owned land at Kettleby in Lincolnshire. During the course of the marriage he held various court or official positions and added to his land holdings. He was a...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Oxenbridge Lady Tyrwhit
Although Lady Tyrwhit
was a cousin by marriage of Katherine Parr
, their shared allegiance to the reformed religion was probably the key to their relationship. The Protestant historian John Foxe
wrote that Elizabeth Tyrwhit...
Friends, Associates
Frances Neville Baroness Abergavenny
Her family networks, too, were Protestant. Her parents were close friends and country neighbours of Katherine Brandon Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk
(letter-writer, patron of women writers, friend and associate of Katherine Parr
). In 1563...
Friends, Associates
Anne Askew
AA
was associated in these activities with Queen Katherine Parr
; this contributed to her persecution. Authorities hoped to incriminate the queen through AA
.
Wilson, Derek. A Tudor Tapestry: Men, Women and Society in Reformation England. Heinemann, 1972.
182
Beilin, Elaine V., and Anne Askew. “Introduction”. The Examinations of Anne Askew, Oxford University Press, 1996.
xxvii
Intertextuality and Influence
Queen Elizabeth I
The style is elaborate and heavily ornamented. It was probably inspired by Katherine Parr
's own The Lamentacion of a Synner.
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Oxenbridge Lady Tyrwhit
Tyrwhit's prayers bring together, in cheerful ecumenicity, the Bible, the old Roman Catholic
tradition of books of hours, and newer Lutheran
and humanist influence, grafting new thinking onto an age-old tradition of piety...
Material Conditions of Writing
Elizabeth Oxenbridge Lady Tyrwhit
After the death in childbirth of the former queen Katherine Parr
, Elizabeth Tyrwhit, her friend and servant, was called to testify about her deathbed.
Tyrwhit, Elizabeth Oxenbridge, Lady. “Introduction”. Elizabeth Tyrwhit’s Morning and Evening Prayers, edited by Susan M. Felch, Ashgate, 2008, pp. 1-51.
8-9
Occupation
Elizabeth Oxenbridge Lady Tyrwhit
Elizabeth Tyrwhit
's life at Court took a different turn after Katherine Parr
's marriage to Henry VIII
(on 12 July 1543). She participated with the queen and a whole group of court ladies in...
politics
Elizabeth Oxenbridge Lady Tyrwhit
Lady Tyrwhit's fervent Protestantism was, at this date, a highly politicized position. She and her group of court ladies were hounded by highly-placed religious traditionalists, enemies of Katherine Parr
, since the queen was well...
Reception
Frances Neville Baroness Abergavenny
It seems, then, that Lady Abergavenny was part-author of a book of prayers that went through seven editions between 1577 and 1626. In 1624 The Perfect Path to Paradise (called by the Oxford Dictionary of...
Reception
Mary Astell
Astell's late twentieth-century reputation as a feminist foremother led to a biography by Ruth Perry
(1986), a one-volume selection of her work edited by Bridget Hill
(The First English Feminist, 1986), and editions...
Timeline
1582: Thomas Bentley edited The Monument of Matrones,...
Women writers item
1582
Thomas Bentley
edited The Monument of Matrones, an important anthology containing writings by women, mostly religious.
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.
Horton, Louise. “’Restore Me That Am Lost’: Recovering the Forgotten History of Lady Abergavenny’s Prayers”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
26
, No. 1, Feb. 2019, pp. 3-14.
5
Texts
Parr, Katherine. “Introductory Note”. Katherine Parr, edited by Janel M. Mueller, Scolar Press; Ashgate, 1996, p. ix - xiv.