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This ambitious and interdisciplinary book redraws the history of early modern Englishwomen’s reading, exploring the connections between gender, reading habits and genre throughout the seventeenth century. It challenges accepted historiographical narratives about reading that have privileged male experience and the impact of the Civil War, and highlights the multiplicity and complexity of women’s reading practices, focusing on the ways in which they used reading in constructing their gender identity. Reading was a gendered act in the early modern period; in reading certain genres, women were negotiating a range of gendered behavioural norms. From religious texts, romances and cookbooks, to news, scientific and medical treatises, and household records, this book draws on archival sources across a wide range of writing types to offer a more complete picture of women’s reading experiences, ultimately questioning the accepted notion of ‘the woman reader’ itself.
Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England sheds new light on early modern women readers, treating reading and book use as performative contributions to identity formation. This fascinating book is a treasure trove of familiar and new evidence, complicating our sense of how and why seventeenth-century women used their books.
— Martine Van Elk, Professor of English, California State University, USA
- Introduction
- 1 ‘She much delighted in that holy Book’: Women’s Religious Reading Habits
- 2 ‘Reading unprofitable romances’: Gender, Identity and the Romance Genre
- 3 ‘I harde yow once saye yow loved forryne newes’: Women News Readers
- 4 Women Reading Science and Philosophy: Medical, Culinary and Philosophical Knowledge
- 5 (Re)Reading and Record Keeping
- Conclusion