The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh [Paperback]

The first edition of the collected poetry and prose of the Restoration feminist, Mary, Lady Chudleigh (1656-1710), this volume includesThe Ladies Defenceas well as her final prose meditations. New biographical and bibliographical information in the Introduction revises the existing accounts of her life and literary career. The volume makes available for the first time the complete range of Chudleigh's literary experiments and calls for a reassessment of the image of the woman writer of the Restoration. A friend of John Dryden and Mary Astell, Chudleigh experimented with a variety of literary forms, from satire to biblical paraphrase, but always maintained her belief in the importance of education for women and the necessity for self-determination.

The edition, and the series, is a refreshing change from the shoddily-produced editions of female writers that have been proliferating for some time. Ezell's contributions are illuminating, but never pedantic. --Alexander Pettit,University of North Texas

This is a fine collection. --Judith B. Slagle,Middle Tennessee State University

It is a pleasure to have this well-edited text available at such a reasonable price. --Anthony Low,New York University

WOMEN WRITERS IN ENGLISH 1350-1850: General Editors: Susanne Woods and Elizabeth H. Hageman
This unprecedented new series reintroduces women's writings of cultural and literary interest, from the medieval period through the early nineteenth century, often for the first time since their original publication. The writers represented in the series were generally well known and highly regarded in their day, but were forgotten with the development of the canon of English studies in the later nineteenth century. Derived from the Brown University Women Writers Project, the series unearths a wide range of neglected gems, dispelling the myth that women wrote little of real value before the Victorian period. lóS