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Distributed for Iter Press

Writings of a Well-Learned Gentlewoman

The collected writings of Margaret More Roper, presented and annotated for classroom use.

Margaret More Roper (1505–44) was, at the age of nineteen, the first early modern woman writer in Tudor England and the first nonroyal woman to have a book printed in the English language. As the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, Roper received a cutting-edge education in Latin and Greek that was virtually unprecedented for a woman. Besides gaining an international reputation for her outstanding erudition, Roper served as More’s confidante during his imprisonment. Her correspondence from this period offers valuable insight into a key moment in English history.

This Other Voice series edition recognizes Margaret More Roper as a notable historical figure in her own right and as one of the most learned women of her time. It publishes all her extant writings in modernized spelling, with annotations, a glossary, and a current bibliography of studies about her.
 

152 pages | 7 color plates | 6 x 9 | © 2024

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

History: British and Irish History

Literature and Literary Criticism: British and Irish Literature

Women's Studies


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Reviews

"Writings of a Well-Learned Gentlewoman presents for the first time all of Margaret Roper’s known writings, together with supplementary texts by Erasmus, Hyrde, and Alington that set the writings in context. With glosses, annotations, and new translations of Latin texts the editors bring fresh light to bear on Roper’s work. In doing so, they confirm the shift from a hagiographical emphasis on her as dutiful and devoted daughter to an appraisal of her achievements as scholar and translator. From a wider perspective, they offer an objective picture of what it meant to have been a “well-learned gentlewoman” in early Tudor England, and what it has meant since to have become an iconic figure within and beyond its shores."

Brenda M. Hosington, Université de Montréal and University of Warwick

Table of Contents

Illustrations

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

A DEVOUT TREATISE UPON THE PATER NOSTER
Preface, by Richard Hyrde
The First Petition
The Second Petition
The Third Petition
The Fourth Petition
The Fifth Petition
The Sixth Petition
The Seventh Petition

LETTERS
1. From Desiderius Erasmus, September 6, 1529
2. To Desiderius Erasmus, November 4, 1529
3. To Thomas More, May? 1534
4. Alice Alington to Margaret Roper, August 17, 1534
5. Margaret Roper to Alice Alington, 1534
6. To Thomas More, 1534
7. Excerpts from an Otherwise Lost Letter to Thomas More, 1534 or 1535

APPENDIX: POEM ATTRIBUTED TO MARGARET ROPER

Bibliography

Glossary

Index

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