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Early Modern England Encyclopedia
By Kate McPherson, inspired by
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The period from about 1500 to 1700 CE saw a noticeable increase in the number of women writers in England. Only a few works are known to have been published by women in England before 1500, but the printing trade was in its infancy during the last decades of the 15th century. However, over 100 works were composed or translated by English women between 1500 and 1640. Although this is an impressive increase, it is a mere fraction of the thousands of works written by men.
Elizabethan and Jacobean women wrote prose narratives, poetry, prayers, essays, confessions, letters, diaries, prefaces, and translations. Noblewomen, women from the gentry, and middle-class women wrote on subjects ranging from religion to motherhood to social commentary. Most of the published works by English women in the period were religious or literary, while more personal works were usually left in manuscript form. Dramatic works by William Shakespeare shows many literate women characters in his plays, such as Beatrice, Lady Macbeth, and Juliet, typically shown reading and writing letters.
Margaret Tyler, in a letter
if men may and do bestow such of their travails upon gentlewomen, then may we women read such of their works as they dedicate unto us, and if we may read them, why not farther wade in them to the search of a truth? my persuasion hath been thus, that it is all one for a woman to pen a story, as for a man to address his story to a woman.
Before the Church of England was established in 1533, women with intellectual ambitions often entered a nunnery to get an education. When Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church, this opportunity vanished because of the dissolution of monasteries. Many intellectual women lost an important refuge due to this cataclysmic change in religion and society. Part of this upheaval was also the result of the humanist movement, which emphasized the potential, freedom, and dignity of mankind. Humanists, however, were divided as to whether this potential extended to women, or whether women were too inferior to properly benefit from secular education. Yet many elite Elizabethan and Jacobean women received extensive humanist educations from private tutors that enabled them to read and write in English, Latin, and sometimes Greek. A fre notable examples of women who received a humanist education include:
But even those early modern Englishmen (and some Englishwomen) that believed women should be educated and allowed to write reasoned that it would make the women better Christians and better wives, rather than being seen as a way of liberating their minds.
However, at least briefly, due in large part to Elizabeth I, women gained some status and opportunity for education. While women were given the education to become writers, they became increasingly sheltered from the largely male worlds of commerce and government, and so there were still fewer women writing than men. The death of Queen Elizabeth I was followed by a reaction against women’s intellectual aspirations, with a corresponding decline in published secular works by women. James I, whose writings reveal him as deeply misogynist, is said to have remarked about one educated woman, But can she spin?
Early modern Englishwomen wrote in a variety of genres. Here is a list of popular genres and some women who wrote in them: