Women Poets of the English Civil War

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. -- .