WOMEN WRITING THE ENGLISH REPUBLIC, 1625-1681

First edition, first printing. Hardcover. Publisher's black cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in the pictorial dustwrapper. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, with a touch of bumping to the edges and spine tips. The contents are clean throughout, and without inscriptions or stamps. The top edge of the text block has a couple of light marks. Complete with lightly rubbed and marked dustwrapper, which has a barcode label pasted on the rear panel.

A groundbreaking work of feminist and literary history, summarised thus in a short synopsis preceding the text "This ambitious and highly original book is the first to argue that women played a significant role in formulating and enacting English republican precepts. Even as feminists contend that republicanism's division of private from public spheres excludes women from political power, [Katharine] Gillespie demonstrates how seventeenth-century Englishwomen articulated republicanism's key insight: meaningful action, political or otherwise, does and should take place outside the purview of government, in spheres that not only include women, but that women helped construct".