A medieval woman's book of outdoor sports

[dancingwriter]

Here is an excerpt from Dame Juliana Berners's Booke of haukynge, huntyng and fysshyng. Yet more evidence that Virginia Woolf was wrong when she said of pre-Restoration women writers that "if they wrote themselves, ... they did not dare to put their names to what they wrote, and it has vanished" (not to mention her assertion that "nothing is known

Comments

[sartorias]

We can forgive Woolf because in her day, the men who controlled publishing didn't see fit to reprint these women. That is no longer true, and we are the richer for being able to "hear" their voices again.

[dancingwriter]

Agreed about Woolf--what bothers me is how many people still make the same assumptions! But I guess that at least gives some of us a Mission In Life.... :-)

[angevin2]

Christine de Pisan is awesome. *nods*

So are medieval/Renaissance women writers, for that matter. I ought to finish my "Better Know a Poet" feature on Elizabeth Cary.

[dancingwriter]

I wanted to work Elizabeth Cary into one of my Elizabethan books, but her work is just a bit too late. I have managed, though, to bring in some stuff from Jane Anger, Aemilia Lanyer, Martha Moulsworth, Grace Mildmay, and of course Mary Sidney Herbert and Elizabeth herself. (I was able to use bits from Lanyer, Moulsworth, and Mildmay in which they were looking back on events or situations that probably occurred during Elizabeth's reign--or anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!) In the last book (on religious life), I plan to include some of Margaret Hoby's diary, and I'd really like to use Anne Southwell's poem about Adam and Eve--it's just possible that she wrote it during Elizabeth's reign....

Anyway, hooray for your work on Cary! (And for your awesome icon!)

[dancingwriter]

Oh, and Isabella Whitney (can't believe I forgot to mention her before!)--I put a couple excerpts from her work into my urban-life book.