Gender and Collaboration in Seventeenth-Century English Poetry: Philip and Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, Katherine Philips and Mary, Lady Chudleigh

Abstract

This dissertation examines the collaborative poetry and poetics of four early modern women writers: Mary Sidney Herbert (1561-1621), Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645), Katherine Philips (1631-1664) and Mary, Lady Chudleigh (1656 – 1710). It critically recovers women’s poetry and their different modes of literary collaboration at the same time as it explores their unique manuscript and print practices. The critical methods employed are primarily historicist and formal and founded on close reading of revision processes, literary source materials and formal poetics. Additionally, each chapter argues that the contexts of relationship and community are integral to understanding how women writers employed collaborative writing practices as well as the significance of collaboration as an alternative to competition. I conclude that, across the long seventeenth century, the intellectual social agency of women writers grows through their collaborative writing practices, evidenced by publication and print.