Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght

Rachel Speght was the first Englishwoman to identify herself, unmistakably and by name, as a polemicist and critic of contemporary gender ideology. This edition includes her polemical foray into the Jacobean gender wars and her collected poems. Speght''s tract, A Mouzzell for Melastomus (1617), is at once a spirited answer to Joseph Swetnam''s attack on women and a serious effort to stake women''s...