History, Department of
Date of this Version
Spring 2001
Abstract
One of the most famous women in history was a Scotswoman, Mary Stuart. But the rest of women in Scottish history have long been ignored. Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen Meikle have put together an impressive collection that addresses women in Scotland in the medieval and early modem period. The editors argue persuasively that it is important to know about Scotswomen from all social levels. The book includes a very useful time line and introduc- tory bibliographical essay. The twenty essays in the collection are arranged under the themes of religion, literature, legal history, the economy, politics, and the family. ... Ewen and Meikle have put together a collection of strong essays, a number of which demonstrate both the connections between Scottish women's experience with those in England and the continent as well as what was unique for the Scottish experience. The essays suggest a number of directions for scholars to explore in the future.
Included are: R. Andrew McDonald's essay on the foundation and patronage of nunneries in twelfth-and early thirteenth-century Scotland
Audrey-Beth Fitch's essay, "Power Through Purity: The Virgin Martyrs and Women's Salvation in Pre-Reformation Scotland"
David Mullan's fine essay on women in Scottish divinity
Evelyn S. Newlyn on representations of women in literature that also show religious values
Andrea Thompson on the women at the court of James V
Ruth Grant about women in the reign of James VI
Maureen Meikle on Anna of Denmark and Court finance
Karl von den Steinen on the activism of early eighteenth-century aristocratic women
Priscilla Bawcutt and Bridget Henish on James II's daughters and their foreign marriages
Anne Frater on Gaelic-speaking Highland women in the early modem period
Domhnall Uilleam Stiubhart's essay on women in the Gaelic highlands
Elizabeth Ewan on women brewers in late medieval towns
Alastair Mann on the role of women in the book trade in early modem Scotland
Helen Dingwall on women's role in the economy in late seventeenth-century Edinburgh
Essays on Scottish women and the law, by John Finlay, Winifred Coutts, and Michael Graham
Essays on women's roles in the family by Roxanne Reddington-Wilde and Ian D. Whyte and Kathleen A. Whyte.
Comments
Published in ALBION: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL CONCERNED WITH BRITISH STUDIES, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 172-173. Copyright © 2001 Appalachian State University, published by University of Chicago Press. Used by permission.