Like all good irony, it works because it reveals a universally understood truth about women and writing. Most topics are off-limits, but not all. A conventional take on religion is usually a safe bet. Perhaps instructing other women as to how to be a good woman. Because, as a woman, if you are given the gift of education, your literacy is not a means of opening doors to different ways of being, but designed to prepare you better for your decreed role in life. Your task is to provide moral guidance, not to entertain, since for you to provide pleasure to your reader would make you little more than a courtesan. If you do have to write about sex and desire, then bear in mind that religious and literary traditions link women’s sexuality to subjection rather than authority. This lecture follows an afternoon colloquium on Writing Women, which is open to all ( more information here).

That we know about Montegu at all is owed to a trip she took to Rotterdam in her 70s, while dying of cancer. There, she handed over her papers to an evangelical Presbyterian minister for safekeeping. They were published after her death in 1763 and “still have the power to charm but also provoke outrage.” Beer admits that she can’t do Montegu’s life justice in one short chapter. I only wish she’d write a whole book about this woman. Unfortunately, when we get to the essay on Anne Bradstreet, Eve begins to lose her bite. Perhaps Beer wrote this chapter to maintain a steady chronology. But I don’t see how Bradstreet fits the book’s premise. In fact, Beer suggests that Bradstreet’s poetry might have been published — with the help of her father, husband, and brother-in-law — to counter the scandalous behavior of her sister Sarah, a London preacher. “Why should Bradstreet do our feminist heavy lifting,” Beer asks. To which I reply, tell us more about Sarah! Thank you for taking that on board. If you are very good, we might allow you to write, but only about certain things and in certain ways and for certain people.

Table of Contents

Our September/October issue i s available in bookshops as well as Waitrose, WHSmiths, Booth’s and Easons. It made me think about the importance of uplifting women in all types of work that they do, whether that be creative, professional or domestic. And that literature and literacy are also a privilege not afforded to everyone. An empowering manifesto It’s a little surprising, then, that in writing about them, Beer begins to lose heart. She speaks about lost lives. They were misunderstood and not taken seriously. “It seems that selling a lot of books was not enough.” The fact that we haven’t been discussing the work of Braddon for the last 150 years is, she says, “one of the sadnesses driving this book.” She gives the societal construct, the current views/constraints on women (and women writers) for each of the women in the century in which they lived. She looks at them through our concerns today: sexism, racism, slavery, religious persecution, and explains their stance in the context of their society. She doesn't dismiss or excuse; but explains.

This is part biography, part revisionist history, and part literary philosophy, through the lives of eight writers whose work, created between the 14th and 19th centuries, has survived against the odds to today. Beer works chronologically from two late-medieval autobiographers Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (Kempe is hilarious by the way, definitely recommend), Renaissance poet Aemilia Lanyer, Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet, Restoration playwright Aphra Benn, 18th century traveller and letter writer Mary Wortley Montagu, through to two major novelists of the 19th century Jane Austen and Mary Elizabeth Braddon.Steven Parissien examines how the power of wishful thinking, re-branding or deliberate misdirection can persuade us to think differently about our cultural and built heritage. Having said that, the chapter on Montegu is by far the richest and most exuberant. Montegu was married to a diplomat, traveled to the Ottoman Empire, learned Turkish, and wrote voluminous letters and travelogues, none of which were published in her lifetime. “She writes of wolves and fashions, war and pheasants. Trivial social bitching jostled with earnest philosophical analysis,” explains Beer. She was, the author contends, “setting herself up in explicit competition with the male literary establishment, past and present.”

Join Book Club: Delivered to your inbox every Friday, a selection of publishing news, literary observations, poetry recommendations and more from Book World writer Ron Charles. Sign up for the newsletter. Anna Beer investigates the lives and achievements of eight women writers, uncovering a startling and unconventional history of literature Medicine and philosophy, astronomy and theology all combined for millennia to insist that the female body is intrinsically faulty, cold, wet, irrational, changeable and above all fallen: unfit for the task of authorship. You can see why people questioned whether Trota of Salerno, a female doctor in 11th-century Italy, actually wrote a number of texts about diseases and health conditions affecting women. Surely a woman could not possess the intelligence and expertise to have written the works? Anna and Helen talked about how women through the ages have been unable to find writing success as they silenced themselves for protection in society. However, they were writing nonetheless, and they could’ve had a legacy similar to their male contemporaries. Yet they were rarely taken seriously enough. Women’s work was usually ignored and appropriated; it was hardly ever shared or published. So this book is also for those who aren’t featured: women writers whose work no one ever knew about. Importance beyond the academic world There’s also an occasional mismatch between the seriousness of the scholarship and the rather jaunty tone of the writing. It’s certainly hard to square the circle when you’re trying to appeal to a general audience. Beer reminds me a little of Rachel Maddow, who is sometimes a bit too brisk and chummy in her effort to communicate vast amounts of data without boring the masses.

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The next essay is about Aemilia Lanyer, the illegitimate daughter of an Elizabethan court musician, who was subsequently educated by Katheryn Parr. She was the first woman to seek status as a professional author. She also wrote for women. Her poem “Salve Deux Rex Judaeorum,” now considered an important Renaissance text, re-imagines Genesis in Eve’s defense. Eve might’ve eaten the apple, but Jesus was betrayed by men. Dr Rahul Raina (Kellogg, 2013) will share lessons learned from Microsoft’s customer success engagements at Ontario Power Generation (OPG) Corruption is a term increasingly used in political discourse and international relations. But what does it really mean, and can understanding the world through the lens of corruption reveal anything new? Over the weekend of 22 – 24 September 2023 we will once again host our Meeting Minds Global series of events for Kellogg and Oxford alumni.