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This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field reveals the major contribution of puritan women to the intellectual culture of the early modern period. It demonstrates that women´s roles within puritan and broader communities encompassed translating and disseminating key texts, producing an impressive body of original writing.

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List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors List of Abbreviations Foreword; N.H.Keeble Introduction; J.Harris& E.Scott-Baumann The Exemplary Anne Vaughan Lock; S.Felch The Countess of Pembroke and the Practice of Piety; D.Clarke Imagining a National Church: Election and Education in the Works of Anne Cooke Bacon; L.Magnusson Anne, Lady Southwell: Coteries and Culture; E.Clarke Godly Patronage: Lucy Harington Russell, Countess of Bedford; M.O´Connor ´An Ancient Mother in our Israel´: Mary, Lady Vere; J.Eales ´Give me thy hairt and I desyre no more´: The Song of Songs, Petrarchism and Elizabeth Melville´s Puritan Poetics; S.C.E.Ross ´But I thinke and beleeve´: Lady Brilliana Harley´s Puritanism in Epistolary Community; J.Harris ´Take unto ye words´: Elizabeth Isham´s ´Booke of Rememberance´ and Puritan Cultural Forms; E.Longfellow Anne Bradstreet´s Poetry and Providence: Earth, Wind, and Fire; S.Wiseman Viscountess Ranelagh and the Authorisation of Women´s Knowledge in the Hartlib Circle; R.Connoll Anna Trapnel´s Literary Geography; D.Purkiss Lucy Hutchinson, the Bible and Order and Disorder; E.Scott-Baumann Pregnant Dreams in Early Modern Europe: The Philadelphian Example; N.Smith Afterword; D.Norbrook Bibliography Index

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"The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women provides fifteen fascinating vignettes of prominent female thinkers. The editors do not attempt an over-arching definition of a Puritan, but each individual chapter justifies its subject´s claim to that title, building up a composite picture of a formidable godly femininity." David Hawkes, Times Literary Supplement

"The end result is impressive: methodologically wide-ranging and interpretatively innovative, this collection offers genuinely new insight not only into the nature of Puritanism, and of women´s role within the Puritan movement, but also into the position of women more generally (and thus the nature of patriarchy) in late Tudor and Stuart England" Tim Harris, The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms

"The influence of the widening scholarship of the last thirty years on early modern women writers is evident in all the essays in this collection, yet they succeed in finding fresh and inspiring perspectives into women´s intellectual lives, often balancing biographical and literary interests. By looking closely at fourteen women, they succeed admirably in demonstrating that there is much more to know than we have so far assumed about Puritanism´s support for women´s intellectual culture." Anu Korhonen, Renaissance Quarterly

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