Jane Barker (1652-1732), English poet and novelist, is one of the most important women writers to enter the early modern literary marketplace. This book, the first full-length study of her writing career, draws upon archival sources to reconstruct Barker's beginnings as a manuscript poet, expose the Catholic-Jacobite underpinnings of her best-known fiction, trace her passage into print, and explore connections between her literary imaginings and the national life. It will be valuable to students of manuscript culture, the early marketplace, and the interplay of politics, religion, literature, and gender in the Augustan period. The study also makes a significant contribution to feminist literary historiography, showing how women writers can be approached not only through feminist models of difference but also through more inclusive models of women's involvement in early modern culture.
