Women Poets of the English Civil War [Hardcover]

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.

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]