Women and Publishing Their Works in the Late Jacobean Years

Abstract

During the English Renaissance, male authors of high social rank tended to refrain from publishing their works due to an informal social code of the ‘Stigma of Print’.¹ Female writers of the aristocracy had to overcome an even higher barrier: that of contemporary prejudice against women writing their original works, let alone publishing them. In the case of translations, this social code was not so strict, particularly if the works had classic or religious themes. Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, published her translations with her name on the title page. As far as writing about matters in the private domain was concerned, women apparently did not feel any self-restraint. Partly because of the increase of female literacy, writing letters and diaries had been popular among elite women since Tudor times.² Lady Margaret Hoby (1577–1633), for instance, kept a diary from 1599 to 1605. It mainly consists of a daily record of her religious practice and of details of the management of her house and household. In the Jacobean years, Lady Anne Clifford, as previously mentioned, kept a diary between 1616 and 1619, and Lady Cornwallis kept her correspondence with her friends and family between 1613 and 1644. These were not published until later, but provide important information about the cultural climate of women’s writing, and particularly about their ways of thinking at the time. In seventeenth-century England, however, some women took up authorial positions, circulating their manuscripts among their friends or even publishing their poetry, romances and plays as well as religious tracts. This chapter examines the significance of women’s entry into the field of authorship and publication in relation to the print culture of the time.