by Adams, Max;
DHUODA – Dhuoda: Handbook for her Warrior Son: Liber manualis by Marcelle Thiébaux (ed.) (Cambridge Medieval Classics, 2008).
ANNA COMNENA – Quotes are from The Alexiad by Anna Comnena translated by Elizabeth Dawes (Masterworks Classics, 2015). There is more biographical information in the translation by E. R. A. Sewter (Penguin Classics, 1979). A commentary on ‘Anna Comnena, the Alexiad and the First Crusade’ by John France can be found in Reading Medieval Studies, Vol. 10, 1984, pp. 20–38.
Chapter Four: Chosen paths
GUDRID THORBJARNARDÓTTIR – The Far Traveller: Voyages of a Viking Woman by Nancy Marie Brown (Harcourt, 2007); The Vinland Sagas by Keneva Kunz (trs) (Penguin Classics, 1997).
VIKING WOMEN (GENERAL) Women in the Viking Age by Judith Jesch (Boydell Press, 2005).
SEERESSES AND CUNNING-WOMEN (GENERAL) – Superstition and Popular Medicine in Anglo-Saxon England by D. G. Scragg (ed.) (Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, University of Manchester, 1989); Land of Women referred to above; The Poetic Edda by Carolyne Larrington (trs) (Oxford World’s Classics, 2014). ‘An Anglo-Saxon “cunning woman” from Bidford-on-Avon’ by Tania Dickinson in Martin Carver’s volume In Search of Cult: Archaeological Investigations in honour of P. A. Rahtz (Boydell Press, 1993). And Martin Carver’s own portrait of her (and Gudrid’s seeress) is worth a listen in his ‘Three Alpha Females’: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nb0sw
TROTA, THE MEDIC OF SALERNO – The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine by Monica Green (ed./trs) (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).
A MOCHICA STIRRUP VESSEL – Art of the Andes from Chavín to Inca by Rebecca R. Stone (Thames and Hudson, 2012); and much online material.
PEACE-WEAVERS, WAR-SPINNERS – There are very many editions of Beowulf, the most popular of which are the Penguin Classics edition translated by Michael Alexander and the more poetic reading by Seamus Heaney (Faber & Faber, 1982). For quotations, I have used the 1892 edition translated by Lesslie Hall and available online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm; for the Valkyrie story: Njal’s Saga by Robert Cook (trs) (Penguin Classics, 1997).
A VIKING FEMALE WARRIOR’S GRAVE – ‘A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics’ by C. Hedenstierna-Jonson, A. Kjellström, T. Zachrisson, et al., American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 164, Issue 4, 2017, pp. 853–860. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23308 retrieved 12.02.2018. And for Judith Jesch’s response – ‘Let’s Debate Female Viking Warriors Yet Again’, 2017 Norse and Viking ramblings blogspot: http://norseandviking.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/lets-debate-female-viking-warriors-yet.html retrieved 12.02.2018; ‘The Greenlandic Lay of Atli’ is from the Poetic Edda by Carolyne Larrington (trs) (Oxford World’s Classics, 2014).
Chapter Five: Hard times
CHRISTINA OF MARKYATE – The Life of Christina of Markyate by C. H. Talbot and Samuel Fanous (eds) (Oxford World’s Classics, 2009) (from which the quotes in the text are taken); Medieval Women’s Writing by Diane Watt (Polity Press, 2007); and Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A sourcebook by Emily Amt (Routledge, 1993).
OF BAYEUX AND DOMESDAY – ‘Women in Domesday’ by Pauline Stafford, Reading Medieval Studies, Vol. 15, 1989, pp. 75–94; ‘The Lady Ælfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry’ by J. B. McNulty, Speculum 55, No. 4, 1980, pp. 659–668.
CHAMBRES DE DAMES – WOMEN’S WORKSHOPS – Opera Muliebria: Women and Work in Medieval Europe by David Herlihy (Temple University Press, 1980); and Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A sourcebook by Emily Amt (Routledge, 1993); see also Henrietta Leyser’s Medieval Women; ‘Yvain – The knight with the Lion’ by Chrétien de Troyes in Arthurian Romances by William W. Kibler (trs) (Penguin Classics, 2004).
HÉLOÏSE AND ABÉLARD – The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse by Betty Radice (trs) (Penguin Classics, 2003).
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS – Select cases from the Coroners’ Rolls A.D. 1265–1413 by Charles Gross (ed.) (Bernard Quaritch, 1896), also online at: https://archive.org/details/selectcasesfromc00seldrich; Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A sourcebook by Emily Amt (Routledge, 1993); and Medieval Women: A social history of women in England 450–1500, by Henrietta Leyser (Phoenix, 1995).
WOMEN IN VIRTUAL LANDSCAPES – The World of the Luttrell Psalter by Michelle P. Brown (British Library, 2006); and much online material.
Chapter Six: A room of one’s own
BÉATRICE DE PLANISOLES – Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294–1324 by Emmanuel le Roy Ladurie (Penguin, 1978); Béatrice’s testimony (and those of other Montaillou women) translated by Nancy P. Stork can be found online at: http://www.sjsu.edu/people/nancy.stork/jacquesfournier. It is also worth reading The Perfect Heresy: The Life and Death of the Cathars by Stephen O’Shea (Profile Books, 2001) for more appreciation of Béatrice.
BEGIN THE BEGUINES – Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries 1200–1565 by Walter Simons (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); and see Herlihy’s Opera Muliebria.
MARGERY KEMPE – I have used the edition compiled in 1936 by the owner of the manuscript, W. Butler Bowdon, for Oxford University Press; several others are available, and there is a chapter on her writing in Diane Watt’s 2007 Medieval Women’s Writing.
CHRISTINE DE PIZAN – The Book of the City of Ladies by Rosalind Brown-Grant (trs) (Penguin Classics, 1999); and The Order of the Rose: The Life and Ideas of Christine de Pizan by Enid McLeod (Chatto & Windus, 1976); additional excerpts from The Writings of Christine de Pizan by Charity Cannon Willard (ed.) (Persea Books, 1994); and Debating the Roman de la Rose: A critical anthology by Christine McWebb (ed.) (Routledge, 2007).
A TALE OF THREE MARRIAGES – The Paston letters AD 1422–1509 by James Gairdner (ed.) (Chatto & Windus, 1904): this edition is online at https://archive.org/details/pastonletters05gairuoft; A Medieval Family: The Pastons of Fifteenth-Century England by Frances and Joseph Gies (Harper Perennial, 2018); Diane Watt’s 2007 Medieval Women’s Writing contains an insightful chapter on the letters.
Chapter Seven: New worlds
QUEEN NJINGA – ‘Queen Njinga Mbandi Ana de Sousa of Ndongo/Matamba: African leadership, diplomacy and ideology, 1620s–1650s’ by Linda Heywood, in Afro-Latino Voices: narratives from the early Modern Ibero-Atlantic world 1550–1812 by K. J. McKnight and L. Garofalo (eds) (Hackett Publishing, 2009); ‘Legitimacy and political power: Queen Njinga, 1624–1663’ by John Thornton, Journal of African History, Vol. 32, Issue 1, 1991, pp. 25–40.
MALINTZIN – The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz translated by J. M. Cohen (Penguin Classics, 1963). The story of Doña Marina, as the Spanish called Malintzin, is told largely in a single chapter from page 85 onwards.
ANACAONA – The Peoples of the Caribbean: An Encyclopedia of Archaeology and Traditional Culture by Nicholas Saunders (ABC-Clio, 2005); Hispaniola: Chiefdoms of the Caribbean in the Early Years of European Contact, by Samuel Wilson (University of Alabama Press, 1990); An account, much abbreviated, of the destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas by Andrew Hurley (trs) and Franklin W. Knight (ed.) (Hackett Publishing, 2003); De Orbo Novo by Peter Martyr D’Anghiera.
MATRIARCHS OF CHACO CANYON – The Anasazi: Prehistoric People of the Four Corners Region by J. R. Ambler (Museum of Northern Arizona, 1977); ‘Archaeogenomic evidence reveals prehistoric matrilineal dynasty’ by Douglas Kennett et al. 2017, in Nature Communications. Online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14115
ANNE BRADSTREET – ‘In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth’ is online at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43703/in-honour-of-that-high-and-mighty-princess-queen-elizabeth; much online material is available. The standard edition of her writing is Works of Anne Bradstreet by Jeannine Hensley and Adrienne Rich (eds) (John Harvard Library, 2010).
THE WILL OF ANA DE LA CALLE – ‘The making of a free Lucumí household: Ana de la Calle’s will and goods, northern Peruvian coast, 1719’ by Rachel Sarah O’Toole in
Afro-Latino Voices: narratives from the early Modern Ibero-Atlantic world 1550–1812 by K. J. McKnight and L. Garofalo (eds) (Hackett Publishing, 2009).
Chapter Eight: The unquiet chorus
THREE FACES OF ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI – Artemisia Gentileschi: The image of the female hero in Italian baroque art by Mary D. Garrard (Princeton University Press, 1989), is the seminal work, huge in scope; see also ‘Costuming Judith in Italian Art of the Sixteenth Century’ by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona in The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies Across the Disciplines by Kevin R. Brine et al. (eds) (Open Book Publishers, 2010). More generally, on women and art, is Whitney Chadwick’s seminal survey of Women, Art and Society (Thames and Hudson World of Art series, 2012).
MALICE DEFEATED: ELIZABETH CELLIER – There is, as yet, no easily accessible treatment of Cellier’s life. Any serious history of the Popish Plot provides the background. The Dictionary of National Biography contains a summary article on her by Helen King; and two scholarly papers are worth reading: ‘A life in writing: Elizabeth Cellier and print culture’ by Penny Richards in Women’s Writing, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2000, pp. 411–425; and ‘Neither single nor alone: Elizabeth Cellier, Catholic Community and transformations of Catholic women’s piety’ by Lisa McClain in Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Vol. 31, ½, 2012, pp. 33–52. Cellier’s 1680 pamphlet Malice Defeated can be found, after creating a login, as an online facsimile at http://eebo.chadwyck.com.libproxy.ncl.ac.uk/search/full_rec?SOURCE=pgimages.cfg&ACTION=ByID&ID=V179761
MARY ASTELL’S SERIOUS PROPOSAL – The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist by Ruth Perry (University of Chicago Press, 1986); Astell: Political writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) by Patricia Springborg (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
CELIA FIENNES – Through England on a Side Saddle, published by Lulu in 2016; and the full text can be found online at http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Fiennes
WOMEN IN SCIENCE – Hypatia’s Heritage by Margaret Alic (Beacon Press, 1986).
POSTSCRIPT – For the anthropology of the Spitalfields population, see ‘The Spitalfields Project Vol. 2: The Anthropology: The Middling Sort’ by Theya Molleson and Margaret Cox; for the excavations ‘Vol. 1: The Archaeology’ by Jez Reeve and Max Adams. The Prometheans: John Martin and the Generation that Stole the Future was published by Quercus in 2009.
Notes
Chapter One
1 Tertullian: ‘On the apparel of women’ in The Anti-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, p. 21.
2 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Vol. II, Ch. 13, p. 159.
3 Ibid., Ch. 14, p. 160.
4 Ibid.
5 Vita Brigitae, Ch. 9.
6 Ibid., Ch. 26.
7 Vita prima sanctae Brigitae, Ch. 42.
8 Hymn 83, trans. by Thomas Taylor.
Chapter Two
1 The text of the original survives, but not Wu Zhao’s edition.
2 Bede, Ecclesiastical History Book IV, Ch. 23.
3 Cáin Adomnáin 6.
4 Ibid., 11.
5 Ibid., 13.
6 Ibid., 33.
7 Ibid., 33.
8 Lisa M. Bitel, ‘“Do Not Marry the Fat Short One”: The Early Irish Wisdom on Women’, Journal of Women’s History, p. 39.
9 1 Corinthians 15 51–53.
Chapter Three
1 A complete translation can be found in Dorothy Whitelock’s indispensable Anglo-Saxon Wills and in Emilie Amt’s Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe, p. 130.
2 Quoted by Shamsie 2016, p. 181.
3 Ibid., p. 183.
4 Ibid., p. 184.
5 Quoted by Jones 2013.
6 This and other quotes in this story from Thiébaux 2008.
7 Alexiad, preface.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., Book 13, Ch. 10.
10 Ibid., preface.
11 Ibid., Book 14, Ch. 7.
12 Ibid., Book 11, Ch. 7.
Chapter Four
1 The Vinland Sagas, p. 32.
2 Ibid., p. 15.
3 Ibid., p. 46.
4 The Poetic Edda: Prophecy of the Seeress, Verse 23.
5 The Vinland Sagas, p. 31.
6 Quoted by Meaney 1989, pp. 20 and 3.
7 Trotula: On treatments for women, section 132.
8 Ibid.: On those giving birth with difficulty, section 139.
9 Ibid.: On the entry of wind into the womb, section 151.
10 See bibliography. I have used the Lesslie Hall translation.
11 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book 2, Ch. 12.
12 Njál’s Saga, Chapter 157.
13 The Poetic Edda: The Greenlandic Lay of Atli, Verse 49.
14 http://norseandviking.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/lets-debate-female-viking-warriors-yet.html
Chapter Five
1 The Life of Christina of Markyate, p. 20. The single surviving fourteenth-century manuscript copy of her Life was not published in modern English until 1959.
2 As Dianne Watt points out in a critique of the literature of medieval women’s lives – see bibliography.
3 Carolingian laws: Women’s work on royal estates quoted by Amt, p. 180.
4 Quoted by Herlihy, p. 89.
5 Yvain: The Knight with the Lion, lines 5190 onwards.
6 Ibid., lines 5364 onwards.
7 Abélard Letter 1: Historia Calamitatum. Radice, p. 14.
8 Héloïse Letter 2: Radice, p. 53.
9 Ibid., p. 54.
10 Coroners’ Rolls: Gross, p. 15.
11 Ibid., p. 24.
12 Ibid., p. 6.
13 Ibid., p. 15.
14 Quoted by Amt, p. 202.
15 Quoted by Leyser, p. 151.
Chapter Six
1 Nancy P. Stork translation of the trial, p. 6.
2 Ibid., p. 7.
3 Ibid., p. 16.
4 Ibid., p. 22.
5 Ibid., p. 23.
6 Simons, p. 35.
7 Ibid.
8 W. Butler Bowdon, Ch. 1, p. 9.
9 Ibid., Ch. 2, p. 12.
10 Judith M. Bennett’s Ale, Beer and Brewsters: Women’s work in a changing world 1300–1600 (1999) provides a fascinating insight into professional and semi-professional women alewives and brewsters.
11 W. Butler Bowdon, Ch. 2, p. 13.
12 Ibid., Ch. 29, p. 91.
13 Ibid., Ch. 28, p. 88.
14 Rondeau, line 1. Online at: http://faculty.msmc.edu/lindeman/piz3.html
15 Online at: https://www.library.rochester.edu/robbins/medsex-heckelCP2
16 Webb 2007, p. 137.
17 Livre de la Cité des Dames, Book 1, part 1.
18 Ibid., Book 1, part 3.
19 Ibid., Book 1, part 27. The same, equally compelling and polemical argument was made by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own.
20 Available online at: http://www.indiana.edu/~dmdhist/joan.htm
21 Quoted by McLeod, p. 164.
22 Letter 704. Gairdner, Vol. 5, p. 16.
23 Letter 713. Gairdner, Vol. 5, p. 26.
24 Letter 710. Gairdner, Vol. 5, p. 21.
25 See Diane Watt, Medieval Women’s Writing, 2007.
26 Letter 94. Gairdner, Vol. 2, p. 110.
27 Letter 895. Gairdner, Vol. 5, p. 265.
28 Letter 897. Gairdner, Vol. 5, p. 267.
Chapter Seven
1 Quoted from the translation by Heywood, p. 43.
2 Ibid., p. 45–51.
3 Díaz, p. 86.
4 Ibid., p. 247.
5 Quoted by Wilson, p. 120.
6 Ibid., p. 125.
7 Ibid., p. 130.
8 Ibid., p. 121.
9 Quoted by Hurley and Knight, p. 15.
10 All excerpts are from the slightly modernised version on the Poetry Foundation website.
11 A dialogue between Old England and New. Online at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43700/a-dialogue-between-old-england-and-new
12 The author to Her Book. Online at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43697/the-author-to-h
er-book
13 O’Toole, p. 145 onwards.
14 Ibid., p. 151 onwards.
Chapter Eight
1 Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton University Press, 1989).
2 By art historian Diana Apostolis – see bibliography.
3 Garrard 1989, p. 8.
4 Malice Defeated, p. 1.
5 Ibid., p. 2.
6 Ibid., p. 3.
7 Ibid., p. 18.
8 Ibid., p. 26.
9 ‘To Dr. —— an answer’, pp. 6–7.
10 Ibid.
11 Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue, 1715.
12 From Some reflections upon marriage, quoted by Perry, p. 156.
13 An impartial enquiry into the causes of rebellion and civil war in this kingdom, 1704.
14 Quoted by Perry, p. 189.
15 Letters Concerning the Love of God. Letter V, 1695.
16 A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, 1694.
17 Quoted by Perry, p. 243.
18 Through England on a Side-saddle, preface.
19 1698 Tour: Cambridge to Lichfield.
20 Wiltshire and Dorset.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 1697 Tour: Hull to Chatsworth.
24 Book of Sirach, 14: 22.
Acknowledgements
I must, first, thank my publishers, Head of Zeus, for taking a risk with this project. It was one of personal commitment, and I am most grateful that they indulged me in its genesis. Richard Milbank, my editor, has cast a keen critical eye over its development, and improved it at all stages. I want also to thank those kind friends who have read the manuscript and made invaluable suggestions to refine it from the rough cut: my aunt, June Kempster (who corrected my mistakes on family history); Heather Dyer, who encouraged me to allow my own voice to intrude; Lynne Ballew, who suggested many valuable editorial improvements; and Jan Widmer, who introduced me to Elizabeth Cellier in the nick of time. And to all the women who educated me, I hope these stories will count as my thanks.
I am grateful for permissions to use printed extracts from the following publishers: Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Cambridge Medieval Classics, Hackett and Liverpool University Press. Nancy P. Stork very kindly allowed me to quote at length from her translations of Béatrice de Planisoles’s Inquisition testimony. Quotation permissions have also been sought from Penguin Classics and Stonewell Press.