MRTS Texts for Teaching, Vol. 5

Early Modern Women on the Fall: An Anthology

Edited by Michelle M. Dowd and Thomas Festa
2012 | 386 + x pp. | 8 ills. | Paperback | 6 x 9 in | 978-0-86698-458-4 | MRTS 410
$60 | £45

How to Purchase

This anthology presents the works of eighteen early modern Englishwomen addressing the biblical story of the Fall from the Book of Genesis. The texts, many of which are available in a modern edition for the first time, are fully annotated and introduced for use by students and researchers alike. In addition, the anthology includes supplementary materials that these writers would have known intimately, such as the marriage ceremony from The Book of Common Prayer and the account of the Fall in both the Geneva and Authorized (King James) versions, as well as a selected bibliography of scholarly works.

Table of Contents

  • Michelle M. Dowd and Thomas Festa: Introduction: Adam’s Rib, Eve’s Voice

  • Aemilia Lanyer: “To the Virtuous Reader” (1611)

  • Aemilia Lanyer: “Eve’s Apology” from Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611)

  • Dorothy Leigh: Selections from The Mother’s Blessing (1616)

  • Rachel Speght: A Muzzle for Melastomus (1617)

  • Esther Sowernam: Selections from Esther Hath Hanged Haman (1617)

  • Joan Sharp: “A Defense of Women” (1617)

  • Elizabeth Clinton: The Countess of Lincoln’s Nursery (1622)

  • Lady Anne Southwell: “All Married Men Desire to Have Good Wives” (1626)

  • Lady Anne Southwell: “An Elegy Written by the Lady A.S. to the Countess of Londonderry” (1626)

  • Alice Sutcliffe: “Of Our Loss by Adam, and Our Gain by Christ” from Meditations of Man’s Mortality, Or a Way to True Blessedness (1634)

  • Margaret Cavendish: “Poets Have Most Pleasure in this Life” from Poems and Fancies (1653)

  • Katherine Philips: “To Antenor, on a Paper of Mine” from Poems (1667)

  • Mary Roper: “The Creation of Man” from The Sacred History (1669)

  • Mary Roper: “Man’s Shameful Fall” from The Sacred History (1669)

  • Dorothy Calthorpe: “A Description of the Garden of Eden” (1672-1684)

  • Bathsua Makin: An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen (1673)

  • Lucy Hutchinson: Order and Disorder, Cantos 1-5 (1679)

  • Sarah Fyge: The Female Advocate (1687)

  • Jane Barker: “A Farewell to Poetry, With a Long Digression on Anatomy” (1688)

  • Mary Astell: A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694)

  • Lady Mary Chudleigh: The Ladies’ Defense (1701)