Publisher's Synopsis
Admired by John Dryden and William Wycherly, among others, Lady Chudleigh also spoke to the concerns of her women readers, attacking, for example, her generation's notions of a wife's duties and a husband's powers. This volume is the first collected edition of her works (published originally in 1701, 1703 and 1710) and illustrates both her control of contemporary genres and her experiments with them. Chudleigh moves from being a Restoration Lyricist and satiricist, primarily writing pastorals and lyrics, to a philosophic essayist and religious devotionalist using a mixture of prose meditation and celebratory verse. Read as a whole her long dialogue poem "The Ladies Defence" and two collections of poetry and prose reprinted in this edition, constitute a philosophical exploration of human passion and the ways to live a truly harmonious life at peace with them. This unprecedented new series reintroduces women's writings of cultural and literary interest, from the Medieval period through the early nineteenth century, often for the first time since their original publication.
