Early Modern Women's Writing

1. Introduction.- 2. Women, Literacy, and Domesticity in the Public Imagination.- 3. Muses and Patrons: Mary Sidney Herbert and Anna Roemers Visscher.- 4. Friends, Lovers, and Rivals: Katharina Lescailje, Cornelia van der Veer, and Katherine Philips.- 5. Education and Reputation: Anna Maria van Schurman and Margaret Cavendish.- 6. Staging Female Virtue: Elizabeth Cary and Katharina Lescailje.- Afterword.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.-

Martine van Elk is Professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, USA. She has published extensively on Shakespeare, early modern vagrants, and early modern English and Dutch women writers.

"The book is a timely contribution to the growing body of work on the various political and literary connections forged between Britain and the Dutch Republic during this turbulent period of sometimes violent political conflict and debate for both polities. ... the book has to offer to scholars and students interested in early modern women's writing or transnational literary cultures more generally." (Catharine Gray, Early Modern Women Journal, Vol. 14 (1), 2019)
"Van Elk's well-written and well-documented monograph is an inspiring incentive for more of this kind of research and is highly recommended for anyone interested in transnational relations and early modern female authorship." (Sophie Reinders, Women's Writing, July, 2018)

"This stimulating study offers the first book-length analysis of selected seventeenth-century English and Dutch women writers paired together or in groups; it thus exemplifies current interest in transnationalism, translation, and cross-cultural comparison. ... Well organized, skillfully written, and amply documented, Martine van Elk's study is an important contribution to the burgeoning field of transnational scholarship." (Anne R. Larsen, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 57 (2), April, 2018)

"The originality of this work lies in its wide scope. ... Those scholars of gender studies and early modern women writers who share this evaluation, and those ready to let themselves be persuaded, should read Early Modern Women's Writing. At the very least, this study brings Dutch sources under the attention of an international audience by presenting them side by side with their English 'counterparts'." (Lotte Fikkers, Journal of the Nothern Renaissance, northernrenaissance.org, February, 2018)
"Martine van Elk's rich and eclectic study compares Dutch and English women writers working at a time when an ideology of domesticity emerged, with the public and private spheres gradually but irreversibly separating. ... Van Elk's monograph offers an