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James Fitzmaurice, Josephine A. Roberts, Carol Barash, Eugene R. Cunnar, Nancy A. Gutierrez, Eds. Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Cloth: ISBN 0-472-09609-5, $ 52.50 US; £ 42.50 UK Stgl. Paper: ISBN 0-472-06609-9, $ 29.95 US; £ 22.95 UK Stgl.
This collection of works by seven women writers represents a crucial resource for the study of early modem women writers, whose texts have traditionally been too expensive or too inaccessible for ready course adoption. With the publication of anthologies such as Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England, the serious scholarly advances in this field can become familiar to a larger culture, beginning with the classroom. Designed primarily to popularize texts, this anthology aims its materials at an audience of general readers, undergraduates, and beginning graduate students. In accomplishing this goal, it is efficient, well-informed, and immensely useful. While never weighed down with scholarly apparatus, it generally succeeds in providing exactly what readers most need to know, as well as further resources available if they wish to look further.
The brief introduction to Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England competently surveys the field, beginning with a discussion of the marginalization of women writers in criticism because of "blindness of critics" not only to the existence of women's writings, but also to "the different sorts of value to be found in what women wrote"(l). The introduction provides a handy graph showing...