The three series of Printed Writings (1500-1640, 1641-1700, and 1701-1750) provide a comprehensive, if not entirely complete, collection of separately published writings by women. In reprinting these writings it is intended to remedy one of the major obstacles to the advancement of feminist criticism of the early modern period, namely the unavailability of the very texts upon which the field is based. The volumes in the facsimile library reproduce carefully chosen copies of these texts, incorporating a short introduction providing an overview of the life and work of a writer along with a survey of important scholarship. Printed Writings 1500-1640, Series I, Part Four consists of five volumes of writings by early modern Englishwomen. The set comprises the following titles: Volume 1: Elizabeth Evelinge III Volume 2: Catherine Greenbury and Mary Percy Volume 3: Julian of Norwich; Marjorie Kempe and Juliana Berners Volume 4: Anne Campbell Volume 5: Anne Phoenix

Essential Works Series III, Part One consists of seven volumes of writings grouped by genre. The set comprises the following titles: Volume 1: Legal Treatises Volume 1 Volume 2: Legal Treatises Volume 2 Volume 3: Legal Treatises Volume 3 Volume 4: The Monument of Matrones Volume 1 (Lamps 1-3) Volume 5: The Monument of Matrones Volume 2 (Lamp 4) Volume 6: The Monument of Matrones Volume 3 (Lamps 5-7) Volume 7: Women and Murder in Early Modern News Pamphlets and Broadside Ballads, 1573-1697

Printed Writings 1500-1640, Series I, Part Three consists of five volumes of writings translated by early modern Englishwomen. The set comprises the following titles: Volume 1: Elizabeth Tyrwhit Volume 2: Judith Man Volume 3: Elizabeth Evelinge I Volume 4: Pudentiana Deacon Volume 5: Elizabeth Evelinge II

The three series of Printed Writings (1500-1640, 1641-1700, and 1701-1750) provide a comprehensive, if not entirely complete, collection of separately published writings by women. In reprinting these writings it is intended to remedy one of the major obstacles to the advancement of feminist criticism of the early modern period, namely the unavailability of the very texts upon which the field is based. The volumes in the facsimile library reproduce carefully chosen copies of these texts, incorporating a short introduction providing an overview of the life and work of a writer along with a survey of important scholarship. Printed Writings 1641-1700, Series II, Part Two consists of nine volumes of writings grouped by genre. The set comprises the following titles: Volume 1: An Collins Volume 2: Alicia D'Anvers Volume 3: Eliza Volume 4: Amey Hayward Volume 5: Anne Killigrew Volume 6: Elizabeth Major Volume 7: Elizabeth Singer [Rowe] Volume 8: Ephelia Volume 9: Grace Norton [Gethin] and Frances (Freke) Norton

The two translators whose printed works are contained in this volume were the daughters of Henry VIII. Whilst they both suffered from their father's changes of wives and faiths, after his marriage in 1543 to Katherine Parr they both benefited from their new stepmother's kindness. In different ways, she was involved in the production of the texts contained in this volume. When Princess Elizabeth was eleven she began to translate Le Mirroir de l'Acme pecheresse (1531), a verse meditation by Marguerite of AngoulAme, sister of King Francis I of France. The Princess dedicated it to Katherine Parr as a New Year's present in January 1545. It is John Bale's 1548 edition that is reproduced here. Also the c.1568 edition published by Denham which includes a set of prayers by James Cancellar designed to be said by Elizabeth and an acrostic on 'Elizabeth Regina'. At about the same time as Elizabeth was working on her translation, Mary (1515-1558) was likewise helping Katherine Parr reform Tudor devotional life through scripture-based scholarship, literature and translation. The Queen asked her to join a group involved in translating the influential Paraphrases in Novum Testamentum by Desiderius Erasmus. Whilst the true translators of this long Latin text is debated it is thought that Mary was part way through the section of the Gospel of John when illness (or possibly her disagreement Parr's Reformist sympathies) caused her to pass the rest over to her chaplain, Francis Malet. The translations, including Mary's contribution, began to see print in 1548 under the editorship of Richard Grafton. Edward VI's government required all parishes to acquire copies, so that together with various English Bibles and the Book of Common Prayer, the Paraphrases long helped to shape English religious life. We reprint here the entire section of John's gospel from a copy of the 1548 edition including Erasmus' preface to the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and a letter, which credits the translation to Mary, from Nicholas Updall to Katherine Parr.

Famed for his learning, wordplay, clever fantasy, and insight, the notorious French writer Francois Rabelais (1494?-1553) was also widely known for scoffing, supposed atheism, salacious writing, and irresponsible whimsy. This engaging book is the first exploration in more than sixty years of Renaissance England's response to the humorous yet difficult and ambiguous Rabelais. Anne Lake Prescott describes in entertaining detail how a host of English writers-Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, John Webster, John Donne, James I, Shakespeare, and Michael Drayton, among many others-collectively and sometimes individually appreciated and condemned Rabelais. Prescott documents the extent to which Rabelais's name and work permeated Renaissance English literature and thought. Tudor and Stuart writers quoted him, told funny or scandalous stories about him, imitated him, abhorred him, even judged Rabelais without reading him. In this wide range of responses, from the urbanely appreciative to the pompous and grumpy, Prescott finds new understandings of cultural ambivalence and the ambiguities of literary reception. She shows that precisely because Rabelais's reputation was contradictory, appropriating his name or words was useful in Renaissance England for expressing division on topics ranging from authorship and sex to heresy and political secrets.

Most anthologies of Renaissance writing include only (or predominantly) male writers, whereas those that focus on women include women exclusively. This book is the first to survey both in an integrated fashion. Its texts comprise a wide range of canonical and non-canonical writing -- including some new and important discoveries. The texts are arranged so that writing by women and men is presented together, not in a "point-counterpoint" system that would "square off" female and male writers against one another, but rather in pairs, sometimes clusters, of texts in which women's writing is foregrounded even as it appears with writing by men.

The anthology arranges recently recovered texts into intriguing patterns, juxtaposing, for example, Aemelia Lanyer's country house poem with an expression of a different type of nostalgia by Surrey. It includes unconventional voices, as in the homoerotic poems by Richard Barnfield or the possibly lesbian poems by Katherine Philips. It makes newly available the voices of English Marrano women (secret Jews) and the Miltonic poetry of Jean Lead.

Famed for his learning, wordplay, fantasy and insight, the French writer Francois Rabelais (1494?-1553) was also widely known for scoffing, supposed atheism, salacious writing and irresponsible whimsy. This book explores Renaissance England's response to the humorous yet difficult and ambiguous Rabelais. Anne Lake Prescott describes in detail how a host of English writers - Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, John Webster, John Donne, James I, Shakespeare and Michael Drayton, among many others - collectively and sometimes individually appreciated and condemned Rabelais. Prescott documents the extent to which Rabelais's name and work permeated Renaissance English literature and thought. Tudor and Stuart writers quoted him, told funny or scandalous stories about him, imitated him, abhorred him, even judged Rabelais without reading him. In this wide range of responses, from the urbanely appreciative to the pompous and grumpy, Prescott finds understandings of cultural ambivalence and the ambiguities of literary reception. She shows that precisely because Rabelais's reputation was contradictory, appropriating his name or words was useful in Renaissance England for expressing division on topics ranging from authorship and sex to heresy and political secrets.