Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England
Hannah Jeans (Author)
Series: New Historical Perspectives
Published in association with: Institute of Historical Research, Royal Historical Society
Open Access publication funded by Knowledge Unlatched
This ambitious and interdisciplinary book redraws the history of early modern Englishwomen’s reading, exploring the connections between gender, reading habits and genre throughout the seventeenth century. It challenges accepted historiographical narratives about reading that have privileged male experience and the impact of the Civil War, and highlights the multiplicity and complexity of women’s reading practices, focusing on the ways in which they used reading in constructing their gender identity. Reading was a gendered act in the early modern period; in reading certain genres, women were negotiating a range of gendered behavioural norms. From religious texts, romances and cookbooks, to news, scientific and medical treatises, and household records, this book draws on archival sources across a wide range of writing types to offer a more complete picture of women’s reading experiences, ultimately questioning the accepted notion of ‘the woman reader’ itself.
Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England sheds new light on early modern women readers, treating reading and book use as performative contributions to identity formation. This fascinating book is a treasure trove of familiar and new evidence, complicating our sense of how and why seventeenth-century women used their books.
— Martine Van Elk, Professor of English, California State University, USA
Jeans’ text expands the field of the construction of early modern gender identity with new ways of looking at… evidence. In her work on re-reading, we are invited to consider the nuances and facets of the early modern woman reader in a way that scholarship has thus far not given space to… and places her work well within a field that has thus far not exposed the complexity of women’s readership and of reading as a way of performing the construction of identity.
—Helena Hoyle King, PhD University of Bristol, UK
Reviews in History
- Introduction
- 1 ‘She much delighted in that holy Book’: Women’s Religious Reading Habits
- 2 ‘Reading unprofitable romances’: Gender, Identity and the Romance Genre
- 3 ‘I harde yow once saye yow loved forryne newes’: Women News Readers
- 4 Women Reading Science and Philosophy: Medical, Culinary and Philosophical Knowledge
- 5 (Re)Reading and Record Keeping
- Conclusion
PDF: 9781915249425
EPUB: 9781915249432
Read Online: 9781913739119
Hardback: 9781915249401 / 264 pages / 240mm x 160mm
Paperback: 9781915249418 / 264 pages / 234mm x 156mm
Hannah Jeans (Author)
Hannah Jeans is Lecturer in Early Modern British History at the University of York, UK. Her research focuses on early modern British and European history, with a specific interest in gender, book history and theoretically informed approaches.
Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England sheds new light on early modern women readers, treating reading and book use as performative contributions to identity formation. This fascinating book is a treasure trove of familiar and new evidence, complicating our sense of how and why seventeenth-century women used their books.
— Martine Van Elk, Professor of English, California State University, USA
Jeans’ text expands the field of the construction of early modern gender identity with new ways of looking at… evidence. In her work on re-reading, we are invited to consider the nuances and facets of the early modern woman reader in a way that scholarship has thus far not given space to… and places her work well within a field that has thus far not exposed the complexity of women’s readership and of reading as a way of performing the construction of identity.
—Helena Hoyle King, PhD University of Bristol, UK
Reviews in History
Subject: Early Modern History, History
BISAC codes: HIS015040, LIT025050
Thema codes: JBSF1, NHTB
Keywords: annotation, books, cook books, early modern, gender norms, genre, household records, identity, literature, news, reading habits, religious texts, romances, treatises, women
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