ABSTRACT
The feminist recovery of writings by early modern Englishwomen during the 1980s and 1990s almost completely overlooked the texts produced by the continental convents for Englishwomen for a few reasons. The nuns' writings are fragmentary and scattered, and feminist critics followed an author-driven paradigm at odds with the plural authorship so common in these houses. In recent years, scholars have made headway in locating and editing the nuns' writings, yet the problems posed by plural authorship still remain. Mary Percy's writings reveal that nominal authorship could help bolster a nun's authority both within the cloister and beyond. It might be tempting to suggest that Percy found this strategy so useful because she held a special role as a daughter of a martyr and as the founder and second abbess of the house, much as Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, received sole credit for works written in his name by Francis Bacon.
