Being and seeming : the shaping of the woman writer in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century print

This work explores ways in which early modem women writers were presented in their printed books within the literary landscape of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It consists of a survey of the typographical presentation of title pages and front 'matter in printed texts, identifying rhetorically feminine self-constructions which allow the writers to negotiate their way to publication. This survey also provides a historical context for the close reading of two case studies: Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) and Elizabeth Cary'sThe Tragedie of Mariam, The Faire Queene of Jewry (1613), together with examination of some extant copies. Early modem women writers seem to present themselves as stereotypically ideal and modest in order to be writers who are able to reach readers of the printed word. They are able to use the idea of femininity as a source of strength and as part of a wilful strategy in a fictive self-construction to fulfil readers' expectations of an ideal woman's writings, The survey suggests that the physical presentations of their books are constructed in the full awareness of these strategies.