As the twelve original essays collected in this volume demonstrate, to study the wit of seventeenth-century poetry is necessarily to address concerns at the very heart of the period's shifting literary culture. It is a topic that raises persistent questions of thematics and authorial intent, even as it interrogates a wide spectrum of cultural practices. These essays by some of the most renowned scholars in seventeenth-century studies illuminate important authors and engage issues of politics and religion, of secular and sacred love, of literary theory and poetic technique, of gender relations and historical consciousness, of literary history and social change, as well as larger concerns of literary production and smaller ones of local effects. Collectively, they illustrate the vitality of the topic, both in its own right and as a means of understanding the complexity and range of seventeenth-century English poetry.

In this weighty edition of Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell’s works, based on extensive archival research, Patricia Phillippy brings together all known writings by her: letters, poems in English, Latin, and Greek, documents describing and planning christenings, weddings, and funerals, monumental inscriptions, entertainments, petitions, and Russell’s will. This ambitious and timely collection puts into practice recent critical arguments about the nature of women’s writings and the importance of occasional verse, familial poetry, letters, and petitions as characteristically women’s work. This collection also situates Russell, a woman, squarely and influentially in the humanist tradition, and explores her important place in English letters. This edition moves the field of early modern women’s studies into new territory, with its treatment of monumental verse as an integral part of Russell’s oeuvre.
—Jane Donawerth
Professor of English and affiliate faculty in women’s studies
University of Maryland