ABSTRACT

This book aims to introduce readers to the wide and rich range of sources on the experiences of early modern women. The last twenty years have seen a transformation in the histories of women in this period. New sources have become available; just as importantly, the innovative work of feminist historians has established new ways of reading familiar kinds of records to uncover women’s lives and to make gender a primary category of historical analysis. The experiences of early modern women often strike familiar chords for us, yet the documents here also remind us how differently they perceived their world and themselves. In 1586 the Catholic martyr Margaret Clitheroe was sentenced to be pressed to death for secret Catholic worship; but she expressed herself most concerned with the shame of the public nakedness ordered by the sheriff. 1