ABSTRACT
The poems of Katherine Austen, a relatively unknown seventeenth-century widow, illustrate how an early modem woman used lyrics to reconceptualize her social position. 1 Austen includes her lyrics - which illuminate the range of poetic practices available for a woman's participation in a manuscript environment in early modem England-in her miscellany 'Book M' (1664). As we will see, for Austen, writing lyrics was shot through with social implications: her engagement with the formal and thematic conventions associated with the composition and preservation of verse in manuscript is intertwined with her sensitivity to the social conventions corresponding to the role of a woman of rank.
