HIST376: Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe

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Calvin's library catalog, and many of its databases, use Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Below are several terms or phrases related to first-person accounts that you can add to a keyword or subject search that will significantly narrow your search results, saving you valuable time.

• Personal Narratives
• Correspondence
• Diaries
• Interviews
• Manuscripts
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Examples: (when searching do not include the dashes/hyphens)

• Europe -- History -- 17th century -- Personal Narratives
• Women -- Germany -- Social conditions -- 18th century -- Sources
• Women -- England -- Diaries

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Note: Most of these titles can be found through the library catalog.

A series of primary sources by and about early modern women:

• The series “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe” contains over 100 primary sources written by and about early modern women. Calvin own over 100 of these titles, and the others are available through MELCAT or ILL. [note: many of the MeLCat titles are electronic, therefore not loanable]. To see the titles Calvin owns, select “Other Voice in Early Modern Europe”
• For a complete list of all titles in the series (unfortunately in two separate parts), see https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/series/OVIEME.html and https://www.othervoiceineme.com/othervoice-toronto.html. (The link in Wiesner, 49, seems faulty.)

Anthologies of primary sources by and about women:

• Katharina M. Wilson, ed., Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation.
• James Fitzmaurice, ed., Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-century England.
• Kate Aughterson, ed., Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook. Constructions of Femininity in England.
• Lloyd Davis, ed., Sexuality and Gender in the English Renaissance... Contemporary Documents.
• Suzanne Trill, Kate Chedgzoy, Melanie Osborne, eds., Lay by Your Needles, Ladies, Take the Pen : Writing Women in England, 1500-1700.
• Charlotte F. Otten, ed., English Women's Voices, 1540-1700. (ebook)
• Lisa Kaborycha, ed., A Corresponding Renaissance: Letters Written by Italian Women, 1375-1650.
• Joan Larsen Klein, ed., Daughters, Wives, and Widows: Writings by Men about Women and Marriage in England, 1500-1640.
• Barbara Mujica, ed., Women Writers of Early Modern Spain: Sophia's Daughters. (Texts in Spanish.)

Social and legal history (anthologies of legal and documentary sources):

• Nicholas Terpstra, ed., Lives Uncovered: A Sourcebook of Early Modern Europe [on order]
• John Witte, ed., Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin’s Geneva
• Robert M. Kingdon et al.,eds., The registers of the Consistory of Geneva in the time of Calvin, Volume 1, 1542-1544, Grand Rapids, 2000.
• David Chambers and Brian Pullan, eds., Venice: a Documentary History, 1450-1630.
• Gene Brucker, eds., The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study.
• Monica Chojnacka, ed., Ages of Woman, Ages of Man: Sources in European Social History, 1400-1750

Sources on women on trial:

Witch trials and Inquisition trials are some of the richest sources for early modern social history. Tempel Anneke, which you have, is one great source. The collections below feature multiple trial documents.

For anthologies of sources on the witch trials, see the list on Wiesner, p. 273.

• Lu Ann Homza, ed., The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources.
• John F. Chuchiak, The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820: A Documentary History.
• Richard Kagan and Abigail Dyer, Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics.
• Francisca de los Apóstoles, The Inquisition of Francisca: A Sixteenth-Century Visionary on Trial, ed. and trans. Gillian T. W. Ahlgren.
• Artemisia Gentileschi: 17th-century Italian painter and the victim of a rape; Keith Christiansen and Judith Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi includes rape trial documents.

Early modern arguments about women’s roles and women’s nature:

• Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman, ed. Charles Fantazzi.
• Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Declamation on the Nobility… of the Female Sex [1539], ed. Albert Rabil.
• S.C. Karant-Nunn, ed., Luther on Women: A Sourcebook
• E. Rummel, ed., Erasmus on Women
• Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores, Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers. Ed. and trans. Emily C. Francomano.

(Also see others listed in Wiesner, 49.)

Sources by women religious thinkers and reformers:

• Marie Dentière, Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre; Preface to Sermon by John Calvin
• David Booy, ed., Autobiographical Writings by Early Quaker Women.

Other Protestant women: see primary sources listed in Wiesner, p. 249. Many of the anthologies of English women listed above also contain works by Protestant women.

• Teresa of Avila (the most prolific woman reformer; see her autobiography and other spiritual writings)
• Anna of Saint Bartholomew, Autobiography and Other Writings. Ed. and trans. Darcy Donahue.
• Arenal, Electa, and Stacey Schlau, eds. Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in their Own Works.
• Homza, Spanish Inquisition (above under “trials”) features several cases of female religious dissidents.

Sources by women in (and around) court politics:

• Elizabeth I, Collected Works, ed. Leah Marcus (not only a great monarch, but a brilliant writer)
• Marie and Hortense Mancini, Memoirs (from the court of Louis XIV), ed. Sarah Nelson.
• Other French memoirists: Catherine de’ Medici; Marguerite de Valois; Charlotte Arbaleste de Mournay
• María de Guevara, Warnings to the Kings and Advice on Restoring Spain. ed. Nieves Romero-Díaz

Learned women and proto-feminist authors (most of these women wrote multiple works):

• Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618-80, granddaughter of James I of England, Princess of Bohemia), amateur philosopher and correspondent of René Descartes—see her correspondence with him, ed. Lisa Shapiro)
• Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1624-74), memoirist and amateur scientist
• Ana Maria van Schurman (1607-78), polymathic Dutch scholar, first woman to attend university
• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-95), Mexican nun, poet, playwright, social critic Reply to Sor Filotea: https://dept.sfcollege.edu/hfl/hum2461/pdfs/sjicanswer.pdf
• Mary Astell (1666–1731), English philosopher and advocate of women’s education
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97), mother of Mary Shelley, antagonist of Rousseau)
• María de Zayas y Sotomayor (Spanish novelist, challenged “Golden Age” gender conventions)
• Olympe de Gouges (Marie Gouze, 1748-93), advocate of female political rights in French Revolution

Miscellaneous (other interesting memoirs on various female lifestyles):

• Hilary Marland, ed., Mother and Child Were Saved: The Memoirs (1693-1740) of Frisian Midwife Catharina Schrader.
• Catalina de Erauso, Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World. Ed. Michel Stepto and Gabri Stepto.
• Richard Kagan and Abigail Dyer, Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics.
• The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln, ed. Marvin Lowenthal. (a 17th-century German Jewish merchant)