Women's Reading Habits and Gendered Genres, c.1600 - 1700

The history of early modern reading has long been based on narratives of long-term change, tracing the move from scholarly, humanist reading habits to the leisured reading of the eighteenth century. These narratives are normatively masculine, and leave little room for women and non-elite men. The studies of women readers that have emerged have largely been based on case studies of exceptional women. This thesis, then, provides the first diachonic study of women’s reading habits in the seventeenth century, offering a fresh perspective on the chronology of early modern reading.
This encompasses an exploration of women’s participation in certain reading habits or cultures, such as ‘active reading’ methods and the rise of news culture. Moreover, there is an examination of the connections between reading and gender. This thesis proposes that reading was often used as a signifier of gender, and that by discussing their reading women entered into a discourse about femininity and identity. The sources, drawn largely from archival research across the UK and the USA, are wide-ranging, and piece together examples of reading, and representations thereof, from a variety of different seventeenth-century Englishwomen. This is a both a recovery project, and a reimagining of the field, complicating chronologies and approaches common to previous studies of reading.
Ultimately, this thesis investigates both the practice and act of reading, and the nature of the ‘woman reader’ herself. It argues that our categories of analysis need to be complicated and nuanced when discussing the history of both reading and women, and proposes that the ‘woman reader’ is far more complex and varied than is often realised.