The first collection to examine the gendered nature of women's letter-writing in England and Ireland from the late-Elizabethan period through to the Restoration, this book reorients the study of women's letters in the contexts of early modern culture. The volume builds upon recent approaches to the letter, both rhetorical and material, that have the power to transform the ways in which scholars understand, study and situate early modern women's letter-writing.

James Daybell is Professor of early modern British history at Plymouth University, UK.

Andrew Gordon is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Aberdeen, UK.

Contents: Living letters: the subject and object of women's correspondence, James Daybell and Andrew Gordon. Objects of Study: Constructing Women's Letters: What they wrote: early Tudor aristocratic women, 1450-1550, Barbara J. Harris; By the queen: collaborative authorship in scribal correspondence of Queen Elizabeth I, Melanie Evans; The materiality of early modern women's letters, James Daybell. Voices of Authority: Letters of Counsel and Advice: Women as counsellors in 16th-century England: the letters of Lady Anne Bacon and Lady Elizabeth Russell, Gemma Allen; The rhetoric of medical authority in Lady Katherine Ranelagh's Letters, Michelle DiMeo; John Evelyn, Elizabeth Carey, and the trials of pious friendship, Cedric Brown; 'Be plyeabell to all good Counsell': Lady Brilliana Harley's advice letter to her son, Johanna Harris Tyler. Networks and Negotiations: The Social Relations of Correspondence: Making friends with Elizabeth in the letters of Roger Ascham, Rachel McGregor; Irish women's letters, 1641-1653, Marie-Louise Coolahan; Recovering agency in the epistolary traffic of Frances, Countess of Essex and Jane Daniell, Andrew Gordon; Quaker correspondence: religious identity and communication networks in the interregnum Atlantic world', Marjon Ames. Postscript: New directions in early modern women's letters: WEMLO's challenges and possibilities, Kim McLean-Fiander and James Daybell; Notes; Bibliography; Index.