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.
These poems dwell in SP
's familiar territory of icy waters, towers and forests, dreaming stones, desert saints, and mythological fauns and mermaids. March 1603 presents Queen Elizabeth
on her deathbed, with a sword by...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Evelyn Waugh
Waugh emphasized that his book was popular, not scholarly. It opens with an account of Elizabeth
on her deathbed as an old perjured woman, dying without comfort, and reflects throughout the story its author's regret...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Josepha Hale
In her preface SJH
quotes a Blackwood's article on Hemans
which says the many contemporary women with cultivated minds have made it highly feminine to be intelligent. Hale herself somewhat puzzlingly adds that the Bible...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Boyd
EB
endorses Haddock
's blockade of Spain. She opens on England's greatness in the days When Great Eliza
fill'd the British Throne; she praises Elizabeth for her decision not to marry Philip of Spain
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary, Lady Chudleigh
MLC
's occasions include the public and private. She opens with an ode on the recent death of the queen's only surviving child
, in which the speaker, unconventionally, rejects the consolation duly offered by...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jane Harvey
The contents include descriptive and melancholy sonnets, satire, autobiography, and politics (including a poem on the horrors of slavery, addressed to William Wilberforce
, and another about the sorrow of a woman whose lover has...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anne Bradstreet
In her Elegy Upon . . . Sidney, In Honour of Du Bartas, and In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory, AB
pays measured and solemn...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Jenkins
The ten women here share varying degrees and varying combinations of sexual, political, or literary notoriety. Two of them—Elizabeth Inchbald
and Lady Blessington
—hold the status of professional authors. Two more—Becky Wells (whom...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Seymour Montague
The third epistle performs the conventional act of praising historical women: the monarchs Elizabeth I
and Catherine the Great
of Russia for their exercise of power, the French scholar Anne Dacier
, and eleven British...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Violet Fane
The play details the treasonous plot Babington spun to murder Queen Elizabeth
and have Catholic Mary Queen of Scots
assume the throne.
Fredeman, William E., and Ira Bruce Nadel, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 35. Gale Research.
35: 77
Babington and his associates were executed with great cruelty on 18-19...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Ann Kelty
She covers the Reformation from John Wycliffe
(born in 1324), to the reign of Queen Elizabeth
.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Lady Anne Clifford
LAC
demonstrates here an acute sense of history which is not a modern sense. Her account of Queen Elizabeth
's funeral leads her to expatiate on the implications of Elizabeth
's reign, as much for...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anne Locke
AL
's title-page quotes from Saint Paul
's Epistle to the Romans: The spirit beareth witnesse to our spirit that wee are the sons of God . . . . The sentence goes on...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Fielding
Its topic was the relationship between Mary Tudor
and her sister Elizabeth
before either of them came to the throne. Jane Collier
's commonplace-book mentions a scene in Sallys Play, in which a character...
