Beilin 1987

Beilin, Elaine V. Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.

"to ask whether 16c women writers were feminists is to ask an anachronistic question. These writers, in keeping with their era, devoted themselves to regenerating the image of women in the familiar terms of their own culture, not to imagining or advocating a different society in which all women might change their ordained feminine nature for equality with men or public power." (xvii)

"Evidence from some thirty writers indicates that the concept of woman had a pervasive and crucial influence on women writers in three principal ways: by motivating them to write; by circumscribing wht they wrote and how they wrote it; and in some seemingly paradoxical cases, by encouraging them to subvert cultural expectations of women's writing." (xvii-xviii)

"Piety was the lifeblood of Renaissance women writers, as it was of many men." (xxi)

Building the City: Women Writers of the Reformation

Anne Wheathill, Anne Cooke Bacon, Anne Locke Prowse, Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell, Monument of Matrones, Elizabeth I, Katherine Parr, Jane Grey, Elizabeth Tyrwhitt and FrancesManners Aburgavennie

Piety and Poetry: Isabella Whitney, Anne Dowriche, Elizabeth Colville, Rachel Speght

"Whitney's sense of poetic decorum produces a persona who conforms to a maid's demeanor. She has a meek, devout, charitable mind, and accordingly, her style will not presume to the high and heroic, but express only her humility." (95)

"Whitney begins to redefine how a woman may write by addressing a wide audience without apology." (101)