W hitney, I sabella

Abstract

So far as we know, Isabella Whitney ( fl . 1567–73) is the first woman in England to be identified in print as the author of collections of her own secular verse. Although recent reassessments have cast doubt on the commonplace that few women were writing at all in the sixteenth century, as scholars uncover more, and more varied, women‐authored manuscripts, Whitney's contribution remains striking. To be sure, in an age in which the circulation of manuscripts was still a frequent and prestigious mode of ‘publication’, new discoveries of, and attention to, female‐authored manuscripts is an extremely important development. It is however important to recognize that not only did Whitney's work deviate from the religious subject matter typical of other sixteenth‐century female writers who found their way into print (a very small number in the sixteenth century in any case), but she appears not to have belonged to the elite aristocratic or humanist circles from which that rare printed writing typically emerged.