Synopses & Reviews
This book is the study of how women writers, booksellers, spies, rebels, outlaws, poets, widows, wives, mothers, gentlewomen, shopkeepers, and one queen - all of whom were spiritually inspired - made a difference in the political events of the eras of Restoration and Revolution in Britain. It speaks to both Dissenting women at the margins of society and Anglican women at the centre, demonstrating that what mattered to women in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, and what propelled them into the political sphere, were issues of liberty of conscience and the survival of Protestantism at home and abroad in the face of an encroaching Counter-Reformation Catholicism at the Stuart court and in Europe.
Review
To come
Synopsis
This compelling new study examines the intersection between women, religion and politics in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century in Britain. It demonstrates that what inspired Dissenting and Anglican women to political action was their concern for the survival of the Protestant religion both at home and abroad.
Synopsis
This book is the study of how women writers, booksellers, spies, rebels, outlaws, poets, widows, wives, mothers, gentlewomen, shopkeepers, and one queen - all of whom were spiritually inspired - made a difference in the political events of the eras of Restoration and Revolution in Britain. It speaks to both Dissenting women at the margins of society and Anglican women at the centre, demonstrating that what mattered to women in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, and what propelled them into the political sphere, were issues of liberty of conscience and the survival of Protestantism at home and abroad in the face of an encroaching Counter-Reformation Catholicism at the Stuart court and in Europe.
About the Author
Melinda S. Zook is Associate Professor of History at Purdue University, USA, and the author of Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in Late Stuart England (1999). She also co-edited Revolutionary Currents: Nation-Building in the Transatlantic World (2004) and the forthcoming, Challenging Orthodoxies: Social and Cultural Worlds of Early Modern Women (2014).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Nursing Mothers and Sanctified Sisters: Women's Political Behavior after the Restoration
1. Nursing Mothers: Dissenting Women and Opposition Politics
2. A Dangerous Woman: Mary Speke, her Family and the Puritan Gentry
3. Sanctified Sisters: Aphra Behn and the Culture of Nonconformity
4. An Incomparable Queen: Mary II, the Protestant International, and the Church of England
5. Devoted Daughters of the Church: Elizabeth Burnet and Mary Astell
Conclusion: Stuart Women and Political Culture
Appendix A: Poems on the Death of Queen Mary
Appendix B: Sermons on the Death of Queen Mary
Appendix C: Elizabeth Burnet's Recommended Reading List
Bibliography
Index