Early Modern Women Writers of the British Atlantic World

Women were among those sent to establish permanent British settlements in New England, the Chesapeake, and the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. Once there, their experiences were shaped by local customs and governments as well as contact with local Indigenous people and settlers from other European countries in neighboring colonies. Women wrote about these encounters in a wide range of genres, including new ones of their own devising. These works were read on both sides of the Atlantic, sometimes crossing the ocean multiple times in the course of their composition, publication, and reception.