Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda (Volume 32)

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series #32

by Hester Pulter, Alice Eardley (Editor)

Scholars who study early modern women’s writing have been eager for a full-text edition of the works of Hester Pulter since her manuscript was discovered in the mid-1990s. Now that Alice Eardley has brought together all of Pulter’s writing—poetry, emblems, and a prose romance—in a modern-spelling edition, students and academics will be able to access a remarkable body of work. The introduction does a brilliant job of situating Pulter in various milieux (the Civil War, religion, science) and in assessing the genres in which she worked. Eardley’s edition is clear and comprehensive enough to be useful to a wide audience of non-specialists, but its learned glosses are also illuminating for more experienced readers of early modern texts.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

420 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2014

Reviews

[Sami · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't have to read all of the poems for the class this was for, but the ones I did read were so interesting, especially in the Early Modern context (SO much Civil War saltiness, omg). The romance is good, too - a very interesting look into different types of tyrannies and what makes a good ruler.

[Jacky Chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nobody in her time read her poems; many of them are ungendered philosophical musings; still others are feminised laments and panegyrics on Charles I and Charles II. It's the second of these categories that interests me, and I think that Pulter actively politicises gender in her poetry. Like Philips, though, her syntax is annoyingly weird, so three stars.

[laura nicholson · Rating 3 out of 5]

proof that women can do stem

[Lexi Rapach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is interesting and simultaneously bewildering.

[Onur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poems read:
"On the Horrid Murder of that Incomparable Prince King Charles the First", twice
"Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty, that Unparalleled Prince, King Charles the First", twice
"On the Same"
"A Solitary Complaint"
"Why must I thus forever be confined"