Women's Works, in four volumes, is the most comprehensive and accurate anthology of the women's tradition in English, edited in normalized spelling from original manuscripts and printed texts. All texts originally written in Latin, Old English, French, or Welsh are here accompanied by a parallel translation in modern English. Royalties from this book support UNICEF.
Volume 1, 600-1550, covers The Brythonic, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Late Medieval, and Reformation periods; with little-known but fascinating sagas, magical charms, fables, church drama, poetry, love-letters, and birthing-manuals; investigations of nunneries, criminal trials of transgressive women, correspondence of the queens of Henry VII and Henry VIII (444 pp.).
Volume 2 (1550-1603), Part 1, Affairs of State, presents the history and original writings of queens Jane, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I of England; and Marie Stuart of Scotland; Part 2, Speaking Positions, contains poetry and proto-feminist prose; Part 3, Affairs of the Heart, love-poetry and love-letters from women rich and poor; Part 4, Saints and Sinners, provides original trial records of accused witches and heretics; and Part 5, Domesticities, covers Elizabethan culinary arts and homeopathic medicine, and records of domestic violence (444 pp.).
Volume 3 (1603-1625), covers the Jacobean period, with poetry, wit, and arguments by Ladies of the Court (pt. 1), Litigants (pt. 2), Activists (pt. 3), Sinners (pt. 4), Mothers (pt. 5), Poets (pt. 6), and controversies over Gender, Class, and Politics (pt. 7). (444 pp.).
Volume 4 (1625-1650), covers the reign of Charles I, and the great flowering of women's literature in poetry and drama; with accounts also of women and the law--infamous rape cases, women's political protests, miscarriages of justice and the criminalization of poor women's miscarriage (424 pp.).
"A remarkable contribution to scholarship that is also a pedagogical treasure, Women's Works ... should be in every university and college library and open on the desks of everyone teaching courses on or including seventeenth-century English literature." -Margaret Ferguson, Prof. of English Emerita, UC Davis & past president of the Modern Language Association.
"This collection is a revelation, even to those of us who have long been interested in women's writing. From now on, it will be an indispensable resource." -Phyllis Rackin, Professor of English Emerita, UPenn, and past president of the Shakespeare Association.
"[A]uthoritative and comprehensive, complete and final...It will not, because it cannot, be superseded." -Arthur F. Kinney, Prof. Emeritus, UMass Amherst & Past Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies
"The anthology we have needed for so long has finally arrived." -Valerie Wayne, Professor of English Emerita, University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
