Afterword: Reading early modern women and the poem

In 2007, the journal 'Women’s Writing' dedicated an issue to early modern women’s writing following the 2005 conference ‘Still kissing the rod’. The papers published there highlighted both new directions in the field and issues central to the field’s conception that remained unresolved. On the one hand, critical work on a rapidly increasing number of early modern women writers was seen to be transforming concepts of early modern authorship, transmission practices and histories of the book.¹ On the other hand, the field was perceived by at least one critic as persistently marginal, defined by its difference from and irrelevance to...