Women poets of the English Civil War
Sarah C. E. Rossand Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (eds.)
Manchester: Manchester University Press,2017, 392 pp.
ISBN: 9781526128706
This anthology brings together extensive selections of poetry by the
five most prolific and prominent women poets of the English Civil War period:
Anne Bradstreet, Hester Pulter, Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips and Lucy
Hutchinson. It presents these poems in modern-spelling, clear-text versions for
classroom use, and for ready comparison to mainstream editions of male poets’
work. The anthology reveals the diversity of women’s poetry in the
mid-seventeenth century, across political affiliations and forms of
publication. Notes on the poems and an introduction explain the contexts of
Civil War, religious conflict, and scientific and literary development. The
anthology enables a more comprehensive understanding of seventeenth-century
women’s poetic culture, both in its own right and in relation to prominent male
poets such as Marvell, Milton and Dryden.
Contents
Introduction
Anne Bradstreet
from The Tenth Muse (1650)
The Prologue
The Four Monarchies
A Dialogue between Old England and New
An Elegy upon that Honourable and Renowned Knight, Sir Philip Sidney (1650)
In Honour of Du Bartas
In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth
David’s Lamentation for Saul and Jonathan
from Several Poems (1678)
An Elegy upon that Honourable and Renowned Knight, Sir Philip Sidney (1678)
The Flesh and the Spirit
The Author to her Book
A Letter to her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment
Another
In Memory of my Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet
Hester Pulter
The Invitation into the Country, to my Dear Daughters
The Complaint of Thames
On Those Two Unparalleled Friends, Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas
Upon the Death of my Dear and Lovely Daughter
On the Same [Tell me no more]
Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty, that Unparalleled Prince King
Charles the First
On the Horrid Murder of that Incomparable Prince, King Charles the First
On the Same [Let none sigh more]
The Circle [1]
Dear God turn not away thy face
The Circle [2]
On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty
To my Dear J.P., M.P., P.P, They Being at London, I at Broadfield
A Solitary Complaint
Must I thus ever interdicted be?
Why must I thus forever be confined
To Sir William Davenant, upon the Unspeakable Loss of the Most Conspicuous and
Chief Ornament of his Frontispiece
The Weeping Wish
Emblem 4
Emblem 20
Emblem 22
Katherine Philips
from the ‘Tutin’ Manuscript
To my Dearest Antenor on his Parting
A Retired Friendship, to Ardelia
Friendship’s Mysteries, to my Dearest Lucasia
Content, to my Dearest Lucasia
Friendship in Emblem, or the Seal, to my Dearest Lucasia
from the ‘Tutin’ Manuscript, reverse
The World
The Soul
Invitation to the Country
On the 3rd September 1651
2 Corinthians 5:19 from Poems (1664)
Upon the Double Murder of King Charles I
On the Numerous Access of the English to Wait upon the King in Flanders
Arion on a Dolphin, to his Majesty in his Passage into England
On the Fair Weather Just at Coronation
On the Death of the Queen of Bohemia
To the Right Honourable Alice Countess of Carbery
To Antenor, on a Paper of mine which J. Jones Threatens to Publish to Prejudice
Him
A Country Life
Upon Mr. Abraham Cowley’s Retirement
from Poems (1667)
Epitaph on her Son H. P. at St Sith’s Church
To my Antenor, March 16 1661/2
Orinda upon Little Hector Philips
Margaret Cavendish
from Philosophical Fancies (1653)
Of Sense and Reason Exercised in their Different Shapes
A Dialogue between the Body and the Mind
An Elegy from Poems and Fancies (1664)
The Poetress’s Hasty Resolution
A World Made by Atoms
Of the Subtlety of Motion
Of Vacuum
Of Stars
A World in an Earring
The Purchase of Poets
A Dialogue between Man and Nature
A Dialogue between an Oak and a Man Cutting him Down
A Dialogue between a Bountiful Knight and a Castle Ruined in War
The Clasp
The Hunting of the Hare
A Description of an Island
The Ruin of this Island
Wherein Poetry Chiefly Consists
A Description of a Shepherd’s and Shepherdess’s Life
The Clasp: Of Fairies in the Brain
Upon the Funeral of my Dear Brother
Lucy Hutchinson
from De Rerum Natura
Book 1, lines 1-152
Book 2, lines 1048-1180
Book 4, lines 1019-1321
To Mr Waller upon his Panegyric to the Lord Protector
from Elegies
1. Leave off, ye pitying friends
2. To the Sun Shining into her Chamber
2(a). Ah! Why doth death its latest stroke delay
3. Another on the Sun Shine
7. To the Garden at Owthorpe
10. The Recovery
12. Musings in my Evening Walks at Owthorpe
14. On the Spring, 1668
20. You sons of England whose unquenched flame
from Order and Disorder
Preface
Book 1, lines 1-150
Book 3, lines 91-188
Book 9, lines 1-122
from Memoirs of the Life of the Colonel Hutchinson
All Sorts of Men
Textual introduction
Textual notes
Index of first lines
Sarah C. E. Rossis Associate Professor in English at Victoria University of Wellington
Elizabeth Scott-Baumannis Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at King’s College London
