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Article: "The fittest closet for all goodness": authorial strategies of Jacobean mothers' manuals.
- Article from:
- Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
- Article date:
- January 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Rice University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Among the early women's texts published in England was a small group of advice books known as mothers' manuals. In texts such as Dorothy Leigh's The Mothers Blessing (1616) and Elizabeth Jocelin's The Mothers Legacie to her unborne Childe (1624), the authors/mothers provide their children with domestic, worldly, and spiritual counsel. The evident popularity of these texts (The Mothers Blessing went through at least fifteen editions between 1616 and 1640(1)) invites us to reconsider the perception and reception of women's writing in Jacobean England; Jocelin and Leigh were not only accepted as authors, but as advisors. The mothers' manuals, in which the authors repeatedly ...