Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe examines the lives of women whose gender impeded the exercise of their personal, political, and religious agency, with an emphasis on the conflict that occurred when they crossed the edges society placed on their gender. Many of the women featured in this collection have only been afforded cursory scholarly focus, or the focus has been isolated to a specific, (in)famous event. This collection redresses this imbalance by providing comprehensive discussions of the women’s lives, placing the matter that makes them known to history within the context of their entire life. Focusing on women from different backgrounds“such as Marie Meurdrac, the French chemist; Anna Trapnel, the Fifth Monarchist and prophetess; and Cecilia of Sweden, princess, margravine, countess, and regent“this collection brings together a wide range of scholars from a variety of disciplines to bring attention to these previously overlooked women.

Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University and co-editor of Shakespeare, of the Arden Early Modern Drama Guides, and of Arden Studies in Early Modern Drama.Aidan Norrie is a historian of monarchy, and is a Chancellor's International Scholar in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at The University of Warwick. He is the editor, with Marina Gerzic, of From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past (Routledge); and, with Mark Houlahan, of On the Edge of Early Modern English Drama (MIP University Press).

AcknowledgementsList of FiguresNotes on Contributors1. Introduction: Early Modern European Women and the EdgeAidan Norrie and Lisa HopkinsSection I: Life on the Edge2. 'At the mercy of a strange woman': Plague Nurses, Marginality, and Fear during the Great Plague of 1665Lara Thorpe3. Chemistry, Medicine, and Beauty on the Edge: Marie Meurdrac Sarah Gordon4. Anna Stanislawska's Orphan Girl of 1685: Autobiography of a Divorce Lynn LubamerskySection II: Witchcraft and the Edge5. Touching on the Margins: Elizabeth Sawyer's Body in Performance and Print Alex MacConochie6. Anna Trapnel: Prophet or Witch? Debra ParishSection III: Courtly Women on the Edge7. Wife, Widow, Exiled Queen: Beatrice d'Aragona (1457-1508) and Kinship in Early Modern Europe Jessica O'Leary8. On the Edge of the S(h)elf: Arbella Stuart Lisa Hopkins9. Cecilia of Sweden: Princess, Margravine, Countess, Regent Aidan Norrie10. 'Elizabeth the Forgotten': The Life of Princess Elizabeth Stuart (1635-1650) Jessica L. BeckerEpilogue: The Early Modern Edge in the Twenty-first Century11. Catalina de Erauso-'the Lieutenant Nun'-at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century Eva MendietaIndex