lives – Page 10 – Women's Studies Group 1558

WSG members online: Early Modern Medicine blog and the Orlando Project

Now that the academic summer break is well and truly over, WSG wants to highlight the rigorous research of WSG members online. Over the past twenty years the internet has allowed new academic formats to take root and flourish and two great examples are the Orlando Project, co-run by WSGer Isobel Grundy, and the Early Modern Medicine blog, co-edited by WSG committee member Sara Read.

Orlando Project logo

The Orlando Project is a textbase of women’s writing in the British Isles from the beginnings to the present. Collaboratively authored and published by the University of Cambridge online since 2006 and available by subscription, the database is usually open access every March, Women’s History month. Recent entries from WSG’s time period include Lady Hester Pulter (1605-1678) a significant poet who has remained unknown because she did not circulate her work, even in manuscript; Margaret Calderwood (1715-1774) a journal writer; Maria Susanna Cooper (1737-1807) a novelist and poet; and Isabella Hamilton Robinson (1813-1887), an erotic (possibly fantasist) diarist.

The Early Modern Medicine blog was founded by the University of Hertfordshire’s Dr Jennifer Evans and is a fast-growing collection of short essays on all aspects of early modern health, medicine, and gender. Previous posts include discussions of postpartum incontinence, the therapeutic use of human body parts, and prayer and spa cures. Jennifer and Sara also welcome guest bloggers and book reviewers.

In some ways the Orlando Project and the Early Modern Medicine blog represent two poles in the kind of innovative scholarly work, on women’s and gender studies in the early modern period and eighteenth century, that can be presented and disseminated online. And as a group that prides itself on its independent, radical approach, WSG is happy to have connections with both.

Foundling Museum’s Art Happens campaign

The Foundling Museum, WSG’s kind host for this year’s seminar series, is putting on an exhibition that WSG followers can really get behind. It falls a little bit outside WSG’s time period, but it is about the nineteenth-century idea of the “Fallen Woman” and the real Victorian women who gave up their babies to the Foundling Hospital.

To complete the exhibition, the Foundling is seeking £23,000 from the public. It has an Art Happens fundraising page on the Art Fund website, where interested parties can donate, and learn more about the project. It is already 65% funded at the time of this blog post, which indicates the degree of interest in the project so far.

You can follow updates from @foundlingmuseum, through their #FallenWoman hashtag, and from @artfund #arthappens.

WSG member Sara Read’s new book: Maids, Wives and Widows

10807 — Sara Read, Front cover, Maids, Wives and Widows (Pen & Sword, 2015)

Following on from Julie Peakman’s new biography of the Georgian courtesan Peg Plunkett, WSG would also like to highlight WSG member (and WSG’s chief Twitterer) Sara Read’s new book Maids, Wives and Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women’s Lives 1540-1740, which came out in May. It is available from Pen & Sword books, and for a limited time is only £15.99 (rrp £19.99). Maids, Wives and Widows explores the everyday lives of early modern women, from menstruation, childbirth, and bodily care, to employment, literature, and food and drink.

Sara is a Lecturer in English at Loughborough University. She is the author of Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and her latest project investigates female obesity in early modern England. She co-edits the fantastic Early Modern Medicine blog with Dr Jennifer Evans.

WSG member Julie Peakman’s new book: Peg Plunkett

Julie Peakman, front cover of Peg Plunkett (Quercus, 2015)

Long-time WSG member Julie Peakman’s latest book is out this month! Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore is published by Quercus and is available from all good bookshops and online for £20. Peg tells the story of one of the Georgian era’s most famous courtesans, based on her memoirs which caused a scandal when published in 1795, and Julie’s own extensive research.

Julie is a well-known historian of eighteenth-century culture and an expert in the history of sexuality. An Honorary Fellow of Birkbeck College, University of London, her previous books Lascivious Bodies (2004) and The Pleasure’s All Mine (2013), have both been critical and popular successes.