Women, Beauty and Power in Early Modern England

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Edith Snook

      Pages 1-17

3. Cosmetics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

      PDF

   2. ‘The Beautifying Part of Physic’: Women’s Cosmetic Practices in Early Modern England

      • Edith Snook

      Pages 21-37

   3. ‘Soveraigne Receipts’, Fair Beauty and Race in Stuart England

      • Edith Snook

      Pages 38-61

4. Clothes

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 63-63

      PDF

   2. The Greatness in Good Clothes: Fashioning Subjectivity in Mary Wroth’s Urania and Margaret Spencer’s Account Book (BL Additional MS 62092)

      • Edith Snook

      Pages 65-85

   3. What Not to Wear: Children’s Clothes and the Maternal Advice of Elizabeth Jocelin and Brilliana, Lady Harley

      • Edith Snook

      Pages 86-111

5. Hair

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 113-113

      PDF

   2. The Culture of the Head: Hair in Mary Wroth’s Urania and Margaret Cavendish’s ‘Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’

      • Edith Snook

      Pages 115-143

   3. An ‘absolute Mistris of her Self’: Anne Clifford and the Luxury of Hair

      • Edith Snook

      Pages 144-179

6. Back Matter

   Pages 180-230

   PDF

Divided into three sections on cosmetics, clothes and hairstyling, this book explores how early modern women regarded beauty culture and in what ways skin, clothes and hair could be used to represent racial, class and gender identities, and to convey political, religious and philosophical ideals.

• early modern
• women
• beauty
• beauty practices
• cosmetics
• clothes
• hairstyling
• Aphra Behn
• Mary Wroth
• Margaret Cavendish
• Elizabeth Jocelin
• Queen Henrietta Maria
• Brilliana Harley
• race
• politics
• religion
• Renaissance
• Restoration
• Civil War
• culture

“Women, Beauty and Power: A Feminist Literary History is a significant and valuable intervention in the ongoing discussion of the construction and interpretation of female beauty in the early modern period. … It is an important book.” (Heather Campbell, Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 42 (3), 2019)

"A masterful, eloquent, and convincing interpretation of the early modern culture of beauty which has vast implications for myriad areas of critical and historical interest beyond this topic alone." Patricia Phillippy, Kingston University, UK

"Snook's careful and lucid account of early modern women and their beauty practices, and how they variously intersect with hierarchies of power, will be of interest to scholars of early modern women's writing, material culture, and the history of beauty, and it is to be commended for its timely re-orienting of the subject towards texts produced by women." Emily O'Brien, Early Modern Studies Journal

EDITH SNOOK Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. She is the author of Women, Reading and the Cultural Politics of Early Modern England (2005) and has contributed a chapter to the Palgrave volume The History of Women's Writing 1500-1610.

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