Female authors in the 16th century.
Melanie Sands
they were, too!
So - quoting Wikipedia, here goes:
ISABELLA WHITNEY
First English female poet
Isabella Whitney (born late 1540s; fl. 1567–1573) is the earliest
identified woman to have published secular poetry in the English
language. She has been called "the first professional woman poet in
England."
Unlike many of the other women writers of the sixteenth century,
Isabella Whitney did not come from a noble family. Rather, she was of
the middle class and lived on meager finances. This can be seen in A
Sweet Nosegay, where she states that she is "whole in body, and in
mind, / but very weak in purse".[4] Isabella left Cheshire at an early
age to work in London as a servant. While there, she wrote multiple
works demonstrating an acute awareness of public taste
Isabella Whitney pioneered her field of women poets. She published her
poetry in a time when it was not customary for a woman, especially one
not of the aristocracy, to do so. In addition, her material contained
controversial issues such as class-consciousness and political
commentary as well as witty satire, and was made available to the
upper and the middle class.[6] Whitney’s two best known works are The
copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge gentilwoman: to
her vnconstant louer written in (1567?), and A sweet nosgay, or
pleasant posye contayning a hundred and ten phylosophicall flowers
written in 1578.
LADY FALKLAND
THE FIRST ENGLISH PLAY WRITTEN BY A WOMAN
Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland (1585–1639), née Tanfield, was an
English poet, translator, and dramatist. Precocious and studious, she
was known from a young age for her learning and knowledge of
languages.
Cary was associated with the literary circle of Mary Herbert, Countess
of Pembroke, and a number of writers dedicated various works to her, a
testament to her literary reputation. According to her daughter's
manuscript biography she was the author of a number of poems and
translations, though all but a few of these works have been lost. She
is best known now for The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry
(1613), the first original play in English known to have been written
by a woman.
Works
"The mirror of the world," a translation of Abraham Ortelius's Le
mirroir du monde (1598)
The tragedie of Mariam, the faire queene of Jewry. On-line edition at
A Celebration of Women Writers
The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry (pub. 1613)
Reply of the most Illustrious Cardinal of Perron (1630)
The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II (pub. 1680)
The History of the most Unfortunate Prince, King Edward II (pub. 1680)
JANE ANGER
Jane Anger was an English author of the late sixteenth century. The
only evidence of her extant is Her Protection for Women, a pamphlet
published in London in 1589, of which only one original copy survives.
The full title is Jane Anger her protection for women, to defend them
against the scandalous reportes of a late surfeiting lover, and all
other like venerians that complaine so to bee overcloyed with women's
kindnesse.
While her name is possibly pseudonymous, Anger is a legitimate English
surname and there is some internal evidence that it may be genuine, as
may the claim of being a gentlewoman: the Latin tags, various
citations, and knowledge of history all indicate an educated writer.
[1]
Jane Anger was responding directly to Thomas Orwin's Boke His Surfeit
in Love, with a farwel to the folies of his own phantasie (Licensed
1588; no longer extant). She argues that men only see women as objects
of sexual desire, and that once that desire is satisfied, they abandon
them. The Protection combines classical myths with vernacular polemic.
According to a modern commentator, "Protection is peppered with
classical Latin quotes, feminist interpretations of the Bible, jabs at
men and their poor logic, and references to events of antiquity, to
strong and virtuous women classical and contemporary women, and to
women's inherent moral superiority. Well does Anger refute Orwin's
claim that women are lustful and untrustworthy."[2]
A sample of Anger's polemic:
The greatest fault that does remain as women is, that we are too
credulous, for could we flatter as they can dissemble, and use our
wits well, as they can their tongues ill, then never would any of them
complain of surfeiting. But if we women be so so perilous cattle as
they term us, I marvel that the Gods made not Fidelity as well a man,
as they created her a woman, and all the moral virtues of their
masculine Sex, as of the feminine kind, except their Deities knew that
there was some sovereignty in us women, which could not be in them men.
[
KATHARINA ZELL
Katharina Zell (born in Strasbourg in 1497/1498 – September 5, 1562)
was a German Protestant writer during the Reformation. The priest
Matthias Zell was excommunicated for marrying her. She defended the
Protestantism of herself and her husband in Briefe an die ganze
Bürgerschaft der Stadt Straßburg (1557) [Letter to the Entire
Citizenry of the Town of Strasbourg]
Katherina Zell once scolded a minister for speaking harshly of another
reformer. The minister responded by saying that she had, “disturbed
the peace.” She answered his criticism sharply by saying:
“Do you call this disturbing the peace that instead of spending my
time in frivolous amusements I have visited the plague-infested and
carried out the dead? I have visited those in prison and under
sentence of death. Often for three days and three nights I have
neither eaten nor slept. I have never mounted the pulpit, but I have
done more than any minister in visiting those in misery.”
ANNA FICKESDOTTER
Anna Fickesdotter (Bülow), (died 1519), was a Swedish writer and
translator and abbess of the Bridgittine Vadstena Abbey between
1501-1519.
Anna Fickesdotter Bülow was elected abbess of Vadstena convent in 1501
and held that position for eighteen years, until her death. She was
active in literary matters and was widely reputed and respected for
her learning. She ordered the translation of the suffering of Christ,
the life of John, and the predictions of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.
Her Cronicum Genealogicum was printed by Johan Peringskiöld in 1718.
ANNA BIJNS
Anna Bijns (1493 in Antwerp, Belgium – 1575 in Antwerp) was a Dutch
writer
The elder daughter of a tailor, she opened a school in Antwerp with
her brother Martin, following the death of her father and marriage of
her sister. She was also a catholic nun. She taught until she was 80
years old.
Anna Bijns was one of the rare women to be part of the brotherhood of
instructors. The Franciscans encouraged her to publish her work,
Chambres de Rhétoriques (French, literally chambers of rhetorics). She
is subsequently recognized by the Renaissance Humanists, who consider
her the best-selling Dutch author of the 16th century.
Her work consists of religious and moralizing poems, polemic refrains
against Martin Luther, whom she considered an instrument of evil, love
poems and various satires.
Considered the spearhead of the Counter-Reformation in the
Netherlands, she was compared to Philips van Marnix.
One of the most ardent defenders of the idea that a woman should not
be subservient to her man was Anna Bijns. What is unique about Bijns
is that she was among those women of her time who never got married
and, most importantly, never felt the need to do so. Seeing how
unhappy her sister’s marriage was, she firmly opposed society’s
pressure to tie the knot. What is more, she even wrote a poem in which
she urged young girls to remain single and showed them reasons why not
to marry. This poem appeared in an anthology which was published at
the end of her life.
“Unyoked is best! Happy the woman without a man.” This is the message
Anna Bijns is trying to convey through her controversial poem.
Although at certain points the writing sounds quite obscene and crude,
it cannot be denied that the poem is a very courageous attempt to go
against the ossified views of the 16th century society, which tended
to ostracize a woman if she did not marry.
VITTORIA COLONNA
Vittoria Colonna (April 1490 – 25 February 1547), marchioness of
Pescara, was an Italian noblewoman and poet.
KATERINA LEMMEL
Katerina Lemmel, née Imhoff (born 1466 in Nuremberg - died March 28,
1533 in Maihingen; also Katharina Lemmel, Katharina Lemlin) was a
successful patrician businesswoman in Nuremberg who became a
Birgittine nun at the monastery of Maria Mai in Maihingen in
Nördlinger Ries. A collection of letters[1] that she wrote from the
monastery to her relatives in Nuremberg permits multifaceted insights
into life in a late-medieval female monastery and into its system of
spiritual economies.
MARGUERITE DE NAVARRE
Marguerite de Navarre (French: Marguerite d'Angoulême, Marguerite de
Valois, or Marguerite de France) (11 April 1492 – 21 December 1549),
also known as Marguerite of Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the
queen consort of King Henry II of Navarre. Her brother became king of
France, as Francis I and the two siblings were responsible for the
celebrated intellectual and cultural court and salons of their day in
France.
As an author and a patron of humanists and reformers, she was an
outstanding figure of the French Renaissance. Samuel Putnam called her
"The First Modern Woman".
Marguerite wrote many poems and plays. She also wrote the classic
collection of stories, the Heptameron, as well as a remarkably intense
religious poem, Miroir de l'âme pécheresse or Mirror of the Sinful
Soul. This particular poem is a first-person, mystical narrative of
the soul as a yearning woman calling out to Christ as her father-
brother-lover. That her work was passed to the royal court of England
provides the basis for conjecture that Marguerite had influence on the
Protestant reformation in England.
FRANCES NEVILLE
Frances Neville, Lady Bergavenny (died 1576) was an English noble and
author
Frances Neville's work appeared in The Monument of Matrones in 1582
and was a series of "Praiers". Her devotions were sixty-seven prose
prayers, one metrical prayer against vice, a long acrostic prayer on
her daughter's name, and an acrostic prayer containing her own name
MARGARET ROPER
Margaret Roper (née More) (1505–1544) was an English writer and
translator. She was the daughter of Thomas More and wife of William
Roper. During More's imprisonment in the Tower of London, she was a
frequent visitor to his cell, along with her husband.
After More was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to bless the Reformation
of Henry VIII of England and swear to Henry as head of the English
Church, his head, after being parboiled, was displayed on a pike at
London Bridge for a month. At the end of that period, Margaret bribed
the man whose business it was to throw the head into the river, to
give it to her instead. She preserved it by pickling it in spices
until her own death at the age of 39 in 1544. After her death, her
husband William Roper took charge of the head, and it is buried with
him.
William Roper ("son Roper," as he is referred to by Thomas More)
produced the first biography of the statesman/martyr, but his homage
to his father-in-law is not remembered as well as Margaret's efforts
at comforting and honoring More. In Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Dream of
Fair Women, he invokes Margaret Roper ("who clasped in her last
trance/ Her murdered father's head") as a paragon of loyalty and
familial love.
[rather like the story in Decameron]
She published a translation of a Latin work Precatio Dominica by
Erasmus, as A Devout Treatise upon the Paternoster. In a letter her
father mentions her poems, but none is extant.
GASPARA STAMPA
Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554) was an Italian poet.
When her brother died in 1544, Stampa suffered greatly and formed the
intention of becoming a nun. However, after a long period of crisis,
she came back to "la dolce vita" (the sweet life) in Venice, and was
believed to have been involved in a love affair with Count Collaltino
di Collalto. It was to him that she eventually dedicated most of the
311 poems she is known to have written. The relationship broke off in
1551, apparently resulting from a cooling of the count's interest, and
perhaps in part due to his many voyages out of Venice. Stampa was
devastated.
Stampa went into a physical prostation and depression, but the result
of this period is a collection of beautiful, intelligent and assertive
poems in which she triumphs over Collaltino, creating for herself a
lasting reputation. It might be noted in passing that Collaltino is
only remembered because of Stampa. She makes clear in her poems that
she uses her pain to inspire the poetry, hence her survival and fame.
After Collaltino, Stampa had another lover and may not have been a
courtesan as some believe. There is evidence that she was a musician
who performed madrigals of her own composition.
Stampa's collection of poems has a diary form: Gaspara expresses
happiness and emotional distresses, and her 311 poems are one of the
most important collections of female poetry of the 16th century. This
collection was published after her death by her sister Cassandra, and
dedicated to Giovanni Della Casa.
The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, refers to Gaspara Stampa in the
first of his Duino Elegies; which is often considered his greatest
work.
CVIJETA ZUZORIC
Cvijeta Zuzorić (also Flora Zuzori, sometimes Fiora Zuzzeri)
(Dubrovnik, 1552 - Ancona, 1648) was a lyric poetess from the Republic
of Ragusa. She wrote in Croatian language and Italian.
She was born in Dubrovnik into a prominent merchant family, she was
daughter of Frano Zuzori and Marina Radaljević. Brought up in Italy,
she married in 1577, a Florentine nobleman, Bartolomeo Pescioni who
had been Florentine consul in Dubrovnik: the couple moved to Italy in
1582. Being a well educated woman, she invited numerous authors and
artists to her house, which was home to a widely known literary
academy. Zuzorić was an exceptionally beautiful and intelligent woman,
was said to have written excellent epigrams and gentle rhymes, which,
however, have not survived. She is known only by reputation, since she
was mentioned and celebrated in countless poems by Dinko Zlatarić,
Miho Bona-Babulinov, Miho Monaldi, Boccabinco, Simonetti, Marin
Bettera, her contemporaries, as well as later Ragusean authors.
It is interesting to note that she was also mentioned in the sonnets
of the famous Italian poet Torquato Tasso, who praised her virtues and
beauty even though he had never met her. Her great friend Nikola Vitov
Gučetić and his wife Marija Gundulić Gucić described her physical and
spiritual beauty in his famous philosophical work on love, a treatise
on the Meteors of Aristotle.
Unquote
Melanie