Brief Confessional Writings: Grey, Stubbes, Livingstone, Clarksone: Printed Writings 1500–1640: Series I, Part Two, Volume 2

by Mary Lamb

The works by the four protestant women authors collected in this volume participate in the ars moriandi (art of dying) tradition which became increasingly powerful over the 16th and 17th centuries. The moment of death was thought to reveal the ’true’ state of the individual’s soul. This volume provides four varying forms of heroic subjectivity offered by middle class and aristocratic women by the act of dying well. In all four cases their heroic deaths also proclaimed and thus helped to define specifically Protestant doctrines. When so few women’s words appeared in print, this ideological function probably represented a primary reason for the recording and publishing of these works.

136 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Mary Ann Lamb (3 December 1764 – 20 May 1847), was an English writer, the sister and collaborator of Charles Lamb. She is best known today for her collaboration with Charles on the collection Tales from Shakespeare. Mary suffered from mental illness, and in 1796 she stabbed her mother to death during a mental breakdown. She was confined to mental facilities off and on for most of her life. She and Charles presided over a literary circle in London that included the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, among others.