The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing, 1st ed. 2026

This encyclopedia on early modern women?s writing from the English Reformation to the Restoration  focuses on writing by or attributed to women, written in or translated into English, in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Europe, and the Americas.  It is designed to provide coverage of six established chronological periods: - Early Tudor (1526-1557), Elizabethan (1558-1603), Jacobean (1603-1625), Caroline (1625-1649), English Civil War & Interregnum (1642-1660), and Restoration (1660-1686). It applies broad categories of analysis, including the theoretical, material, generic, and thematic.  

Genres: Prose.- Genres: Poetry.- Genres: Poetry.- Materialities: Manuscript.- Period: Jacobean.- Period: English Civil War and Interregnum.- Period: Restoration.- Transmission.- The Material Book: Materialities.- Period: Early Tudor (1526-1557).- International Contexts: National Traditions and Transnational Networks.- Period: Elizabethan (1558-1603).- Materialities: Print.- Theories: Position and Debates.- Sites of Production.- Period: Caroline.- Cultural Contexts.

Patricia Pender is Associate Professor in English and Writing at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is the author of Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Rhetoric of Modesty (Palgrave, 2012) and co-editor, with Rosalind Smith, of Material Cultures of Early Modern Women’s Writing (Palgrave, 2014).

Rosalind Smith is Professor in English and Writing at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is the co-editor, with Patricia Pender, of Material Cultures of Early Modern Women’s Writing (Palgrave, 2014) and co-founder, again with Pender, of the Early Modern Women's Research Network (EMWRN) in 2008 at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Recognises writers often overlooked in favour of male peers

Entries by key global scholars in the field

Covers six established chronological periods