Review by Choice Review
This is a very different anthology from two others in the same field that have appeared this year (Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England, ed. by James Fitzmaurice et al., CH, Nov'97; Women Writers in Renaissance England, ed. by Randall Martin, CH, Dec'97). Largely eschewing poetry and drama (and hence "major writers"),and embracing instead prose writings of mostly nonaristocratic women, the editors provide fuller offerings of materials like diaries, mother's advice books, midwifery books, and radical religious writings, many in manuscript. The resulting collection probably more accurately represents women's actual literary production than either of its two competitors. However, this volume has one major and, for undergraduate users, debilitating flaw: the editors provide almost no biographical material and only intermittent and partial historical contextualization. And yet the writings they include, in part because they are more out of the way and in part because of the anthology's bits-and-pieces format, require scholarly presentation even more than do more canonical writings. What information the editors do provide is generally excellent, but the result of their editorial restraint is to make their collection almost useless to anyone except scholars, and they will not need the anthology. This reticence is a pity because this volume constitutes an important challenge to more conventionally conceived anthologies. P. Cullen CUNY Graduate Center and College of Staten Island
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
