Women, property, and the letters of the law in early modern England / edited by Nancy E. Wright, Margaret W. Ferguson, A.R. Buck.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Women, Property, and the Letters of Law in Early Modern England examines the competing narratives of property told by and about women in the early modern period. Through letters, legal treatises, case law, wills, and works of literature, the contributors explore women's complex roles as subjects and agents in commercial and domestic economies, and as objects shaped by a network of social and legal relationships. By constructing conversations across the disciplinary boundaries of legal and social history, sociology, and literary criticism, the collection explores a diverse range of women's property relationships." "Recent research has revealed fissures in our knowledge about women's property relationships within a regime characterized by competing jurisdictions, diverse systems of nature, and multiple concepts of property. Women, Property, and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England turns to these points of departure for the study of women's legal status and property relationships in the early modern period. This interdisciplinary analysis of women and property is written in an accessible manner and will become a valuable resource for scholars and students of Renaissance, Restoration, and eighteenth-century literature, early modern social and legal history, and women's studies."--Jacket.

Introduction / Nancy E. Wright, Margaret W. Ferguson -- Temporal gestation, legal contracts, and the promissory economies of The winter's tale / Patricia Parker -- Putting women in their place : female litigants at Whitehaven, 1660-1760 / Christine Churches -- Women's property, popular cultures, and the consistory court of London in the eighteenth century / David Lemmings -- The whore's estate : Sally Salisbury, prostitution, and property in eighteenth-century London / Laura J. Rosenthal -- Primogeniture, patrilineage, and the displacement of women / Mary Murray -- Isabella's rule : singlewomen and the properties of poverty in Measure for measure / Natasha Korda -- Marriage, identity, and the pursuit of property in seventeenth-century England : the cases of Anne Clifford and Elizabeth Wiseman / Mary Chan, Nancy E. Wright -- Cordelia's estate : women and the law of property from Shakespeare to Nahum Tate / A.R. Buck -- Writing home : Hannah Wolley, the Oxinden letters, and household epistolary practice / Jennifer Summit -- Women's wills in early modern England / Lloyd Davis -- Spiritual property : the English Benedictine nuns of Cambrai and the dispute over the Baker manuscripts / Claire Walker -- The titular claims of female surnames in eighteenth-century fiction / Eleanor F. Shevlin -- Early modern (aristocratic) women and textual property / Paul Salzman -- Afterword / Margreta de Grazia.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Jstor, viewed April 2, 2018).

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