About the WWP edit
The Women Writers Project (WWP) is a long-term research project, founded in the late 1980s, devoted to early modern women's writing and electronic text encoding, with several web-based resources for study in those areas. Since 2012, the WWP has been developing a growing suite of open-access materials and tools that complement Women Writers Online (a licensed collection which provides base funding for the WWP’s research.)
- Women Writers in Context: a growing Open Access resource of essays on early women writers, written by scholars in the field
- Women Writers in Review: an Open Access collection of18th and 19th century reviews, notices, literary histories, and other texts responding to works by early women writers. As of January 2017 it aggregates early reviews of almost 200 titles by women writing in the 18th and 19th century. These are titles notable for making an impression in the press of the time.
- The WWO Lab: an informal and open-access space for sharing visualization experiments.
- Women Writers Online (subscription required): Authoritative, TEI-encoded versions of women's writing from 1526-1850, created by the WWP. Wikipedians may request access to Women Writers Online via the Wikipedia Library program.
Conflict of interest edit
The WWP is a long-standing project that publishes many Open Access resources. The WWP also produces Women Writers Online (WWO), a paid-access database and an important source of revenue for the larger WWP. The WWP sees its efforts in supporting the improvement of Wikipedia articles on women's writing as part of its commitment to open scholarship. That said, it is possible that use of WWP Open Access resources would eventually lead to citations to items in Women Writers Online, the subscription database. If any Wikipedians have concerns about conflict of interest issues, please contact me.
Help for Wikipedians edit
Through collaborating with library staff supporting Northeastern University Libraries' Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, the WWP is committed to expanding and increasing the quality of information on Wikipedia about women and writing.
Information resources produced by the WWP edit
- Women Writers Online: bibliography: an Open Access definitive list of works for each author covered in the Women Writers Online database. Use to verify titles, publication dates, or preferred forms of author names. Most of the books, pamphlets, and hymns on this list are significant enough to merit a Wikipedia article themselves.
- Women Writers in Context: a growing Open Access resource of essays on early women writers, written by scholars in the field
- Women Writers in Review: an Open Access collection of18th and 19th century reviews, notices, literary histories, and other texts responding to works by early women writers. As of January 2017 it aggregates early reviews of almost 200 titles by women writing in the 18th and 19th century. These are titles notable for making an impression in the press of the time.
- Women Writers Online (subscription required): Authoritative, TEI-encoded versions of women's writing from 1526-1850, created by the WWP. Wikipedians may request access to Women Writers Online via the Wikipedia Library program.
Hints for research on women writers edit
- Writers are typically included in encyclopedia sources such as the Dictionary of National Biography, the Orlando Project (some information available Open Access, some subscription-required), the Encyclopedia of British Writers, Catholic Encyclopedia, Oxford Reference or and Blackwell Reference Online (both subscription required), and others.
- Cambridge, Blackwell, and Oxford companions to literature of the time will also be helpful
- Many older Open Access encyclopedias have valuable information about early women writers; try Hathi Trust, Google Books, or Internet Archive searches to find titles like:
- Memoirs of eminent female writers, of all ages and countries / Anna Maria Lee (1827)
- The woman's story : as told by twenty American women / with portraits and sketches of the authors by Laura C. Holloway (1888)
- Women novelists of Queen Victoria's reign: a book of appreciations / by Mrs. Oliphant [and others] (1897)
- Famous authors (women) / Edward Francis Harkins (1906)
- Notable Women Authors of the Day / Helen C. Black (1906)
- Anonyms: a dictionary of revealed authorship / William Cushing (1889)
- For secondary sources, JSTOR, Google Scholar, and Google Books are good starting points.
- For many of these women, it will help to add terms like "writer" or "poet" or "17th" or "18th" to searches, since their names will also bring back many results referring to contemporary women.
- Many of these women are notable simply for writing and publishing in times when the barriers to women writing and publishing were very high.
- Inclusion in the Dictionary of National Biography or American National Biography is an additional argument for notability.
Topics suggested by our scholars edit
Women writers edit
- Hannah Allen -- English nonconformist writer, author of “A Narrative of God’s Gracious Dealings with that Choice Christian Mrs. Hannah Allen.”
- Dorothy Burch -- first Englishwoman writer of an original catechism
- Joanna Cartwright
- Katharine Chidley
- Mary Carr Clarke
- Elizabeth Evelinge -- English abbess whose religious name was Catharine Magdalen. She was an initiate of the Convent of the Poor Clares, Gravelines, in 1620. Later, she was transferred to a convent at Aire, where she eventually became abbess. She is noted for translating a number of religious texts.
- Sarah Fell -- 17–18C English Quaker, fourth daughter of Margaret Fell [née Askew], the Quaker leader, who accompanied her on one of her missions and later managed their estate during her period of imprisonment. Later on her husband’s estate at Barking, Essex, provided a resting place for Quakers visiting London, especially George Fox and her other sister, Susannah Fell. She was noted for her Quakerish eloquence.
- Cicely Johnson -- Writer of an untitled narrative manuscript which details her life as a Puritan woman.
- Anna Maria Jones -- first woman poet in English in India
- Dorothy Leigh -- 17C English Protestant writer of a popular mother’s advice book _The Mothers Blessing_, which was addressed to her children and published posthumously in 1616. Her writings were mainly concerned with moral issues, women’s chastity and marriage rights, rape, female education, and religion. Engaging with the long-standing debate over rape, she argues, contentiously, that rape does not undermine a woman's chastity. The feelings of shame experienced by women after rape, she contends, signify their innocence, exemplified particularly in those who commit suicide.
- Isabella Lickbarrow -- many new sources, as she has been recently "rediscovered" via reprints of her work
- Susanna Parr
- Susanna Perwich -- Musician and daughter of Robert Perwich. The subject of John Batchiler’s The Virgin’s Pattern (1661).
- Elizabeth Poole (NB: this particular Elizabeth Poole not yet covered) -- 17C English secretary and prophetess. At the age of about sixteen Poole came under the influence of William Kiffin and followed him into the Particular Baptist sect. Poole's claim to historical significance is her role in the political events of 1648–9 as a kind of consultant prophetess, and, most notably, argued against the execution of King Charles I.
- Mary Pope -- 17C Presbyterian writer. notable for writing and publishing in an era when few women did http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/69153; NB: this particular Mary Pope not yet covered.
- Elizabeth Elkins Sanders -- notable for her liberal views towards Native Americans, and pamphlet against Andrew Jackson's nomination for U.S. President.
- Alice Sutcliffe -- 17C religious writer best known for the prose and verse work _Meditations on Man’s Mortalitie_. Dedications and testimonials suggest attempt to make the work a court event.
- Rose Thurgood -- Writer of ‘A lecture of repentence’ (1636/37), a narrative manuscript which details her life as a Puritan woman.
- Mary Waite -- 17C English Quaker from York whose prophetic epistle, “A Warning to All Friends,” spoke of the danger of Friends’ unfaithfulness as Judgement Day approaches. The letter was written in 1679 and eventually published along with _Epistle from the Womens Yearly Meeting at York_ in 1688.
- Dorothy Waugh -- 17C early Quaker preacher. "[O]ne of the ‘valiant sixty’ whose efforts ensured that the movement quickly achieved a national and international profile"
Women's works edit
- The Mothers Blessing / Dorothy Leigh -- very popular book published in 1616, with 23 later editions