Women Writers (pre-1800)

Kudos to Bardiac for starting a new meme to illuminate women writers prior to the 1800s! As I deal a lot in recovering women writers, I love this coversation and love seeing everyone's additions. One of my favorite scholars wrote one of my favorite books, Rhetoric Retold, which discusses women writers and orators such as Sappho, Aspasia, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Anne Askew, Margaret More Roper, and Elizabeth I. I love this type of work and I'm so excited to see some of these names popping up around the web as folks are adding to Bardiac's meme.

So here is Bardiac's draft and instructions:
Here's the idea: I'll put in five women writers. If you're interested, pick up the list, add five more of your favorites, and drop me a line at Bardiacblogger at yahoo dot com to check your site. With even a few contributors, we'll get a great meme with fewer of my idiosyncracies than if I do it myself. (And yes, it will probably end up Euro-centered, but I'd love to learn more about non-Euro earlier women writers, too, so add them in, please!)

The (draft) REALLY DEAD WOMEN WRITERS meme.

Behn, Aphra - Oroonoko

Christine de Pisan (aka Pizan) - The Book of the City of Ladies

Julian of Norwich - Revelations of Divine Love

Locke, Anne (aka Ane Lok, etc) - A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner

Marie de France - The Lais of Marie de France

As Bardiac notes though, this kind of conversation inevitably centers European women as they have been the center of recovery work in women's literature. Two that I don't believe I've seen around are:

Margaret Fell--Women's Speaking Justified, Proved, and Allowed by the Scriptures (1666)
Mary Astell--A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest (1694)

Here are several Africana women from one of my favorite collections (Daughters of Africa) as well: