Carole Levin - A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen: Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts, 1500-1650

From the exemplary to the notorious to the obscure, this comprehensive and innovative encyclopedia showcases the worthy women of early modern England. Poets, princesses, or pirates, the women of power and agency found in these pages are indeed worth knowing, and this volume will introduce many female figures to even the most established scholars in early modern studies. Rather than using the conventional alphabetical format of the standard biographical encyclopedia, this volume is divided into categories of women. Since many women will fit in more than one category, each woman is placed in the category that best exemplifies her life, and is cross referenced in other appropriate sections. This structure makes the book an interesting read for seasoned scholars of early modern women, while students need not already be familiar with these subjects in order to benefit from the text. Another unusual feature of this reference work is that each entry begins with some incident from the womans life that is particularly exciting or significant. Some entries are very brief while others are extensive. Each includes a source listing. The book is well illustrated and liberally sprinkled with quotations of the time either by or about the women in the text.

Carole Levin is Willa Cather Professor of History and Director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Nebraska, USA.

Anna Riehl Bertolet is Associate Professor of English at Auburn University, USA.

Jo Eldridge Carney is Professor of English at The College of New Jersey, USA.

Edited by
Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet,
and Jo Eldridge Carney

First published 2017

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 selection and editorial matter, Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet, and Jo Eldridge Carney; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet, and Jo Eldridge Carney to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Levin, Carole, 1948 editor. | Bertolet, Anna Riehl, 1970 editor. |
Carney, Jo Eldridge, 1954 editor.
Title: A biographical encyclopedia of early modern Englishwomen :
exemplary lives and memorable acts, 15001650 / edited by Carole
Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet, and Jo Eldridge Carney.
Description: New York : Routledge, [2017] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016026065 | ISBN 9780754669005 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: WomenEnglandBiographyEncyclopedias. |
WomenEnglandHistoryRenaissance, 14501600
BiographyEncyclopedias. | WomenEnglandHistory
17th centuryBiographyEncyclopedias.
Classification: LCC CT3320 .B56 2017 | DDC 920.720942dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016026065

ISBN: 978-0-7546-6900-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-3154-4072-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

In appreciation for their excellence in supporting the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Nebraska, this book is dedicated to the wonderful graduate assistants in the program: Nathan Probasco, Cassandra Auble, Alyson Alvarez, Andrea Nichols, and Angela Bolen.

Carole

To Helen Silverstein, my dear friend and a woman whose life force is so powerful and multidimensional that it could fill a biographical dictionary of its own.

Anya

With love for Eleanor Mackay Carney, free spirit, pure joy, and a worthy woman in progress.

Jo

This project started a number of years ago when Carole Levin was reading a book about early modern England and saw the name of a woman with whom she was not familiar and started to look her up. She thought, wouldnt it be great if one could pull a book off the shelf that consisted of short biographies of a multitude of early modern English women. She shared this idea with Anna Riehl Bertolet, and they embarked on the project. Both Carole and Anna wish to thank Michele Osherow for her help at the beginning of the project, and are so grateful that Jo Eldridge Carney came on as a third editor and for all the excellent work she did as this encyclopedia was nearing its completion.

Instead of following a layout of a traditional encyclopedia, we decided it would be more exciting and useful if the women were grouped by category. This arrangement would allow readers to find women who were writers, translators, printers, editors, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, entertainers, criminals, litigants, needleworkers, prostitutes, women at court, witches, scholars, a range of different religious women, philanthropists, women considered mad, immigrants, and expatriates. All the women in this encyclopedia had at one time or another been in England. Many spent their lives in England, but some moved to England as children or adults, or just visited there. As well as the many women in more public roles, we also wanted to include women who were known especially as mothers, daughters, wives, and widows, and this became one of our biggest categories. We also have the category for women who were mistresses. Because many women cannot be categorized in only one area, we have a number of see alsos, but we do realize the limits as well as the open possibilities of our categories. Each category has its own introduction.

We envision this dictionary as a potent teaching and research tool that can help to answer some questions, but also, more importantly, lead our audience to inquire about the lives of early modern woman at a greater depth and breadth. Indeed, although we included over 800 women in this collection, we see this as only the beginning of finding and identifying early modern English women. We hope this collection encourages others to keep finding more women in the folds of history and making their stories heard.