ABSTRACT
It has recently been remarked how little attention the history of women’s reading in the early modern period has received, especially when compared with the veritable academic industry focused on women’s writing.1 There are of course difficulties of evidence. Inventories, library catalogues and other evidence of book ownership, where these exist,2 do not by themselves provide evidence of how, by whom, or even whether the books were actually read, and prescriptive literature has to be used warily for all the usual reasons. Women were also less likely than men to permit themselves marginal annotation of their books.3 While the subject has not been quite so neglected as has been suggested, especially in the areas of women’s devotional and romance reading,4 what is needed is a more systematic study of unpublished sources: the letters and commonplace books of women, where they were most likely to record and discuss what they read. A recent study of the commonplace books of Sarah Cowper, with their detailed evidence of how she applied her reading of conduct literature to her own difficult marital circumstances, shows what striking material awaits discovery in the archives.5 While Sarah Cowper’s reading shaped her
understanding of herself as a virtuous wife and mother, the letters of her contemporary Elizabeth Packer, the subject of this essay, suggest how reading also helped to form women’s political identities.
