Author Description

For too long, works by women writers of past centuries have existed on the margins of literary studies. While such writers have gained standing in undergraduate courses, the high school English and history curriculum is largely unaware of them. This book aims to remedy that lack.Profiled here are the lives and writings of eight women who took up the pen during eras when females enjoyed little encouragement to create anything outside the domestic sphere. By telling their life stories within the context of their times, and quoting liberally from their work, Dr. Brackett introduces a spirited group -- several of whom suffered censure, ridicule, or social isolation for their writing.Christine de Pizan, writing from the 14th -- century French court, engaged in one of the earliest written public arguments regarding literature, and wrote of an allegorical female utopia; 16th-century spiritual Spanish Catholic writer, Teresa of Avila, defended her faith in writing and became the first woman to be named a Doctor of the Church. Some seventy years later, Elizabeth Cary wrote the first original closet drama by an English-woman, while Katherine Philips (1631 - 1664) produced some of the earliest same-sex platonic love poetry. Gluckel of Hameln, a middle-class Jewish woman, recorded a family history that reveals the details of late 17th-century life in Germany.These women join Margaret Cavendish (1624-1674), Aphra Behn (1640-1689), and Delariviere Manley (1663-1724