Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material Culture

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., May 28, 2015 - History - 318 pages
Contributing an original dimension to the study of women in 16th-century England, this pioneering work examines the largest corpus of women’s private writings available: their wills. Through an intensive analysis of more than 1200 wills, women from all parts of the country and all strata of society are revealed as articulate, opportunistic, and capable individuals who, despite legal and cultural limitations, exercised authority over their own lives and influenced the lives of their heirs after their death.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
The Performance of Death
13
Identity and Remembrance
59
Vocation Occupation and Labor
95
Land
149
Money
201
Undressing the House Undressing the Body
231
Conclusion
281
Bibliography
287
Index
307
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About the author (2015)

Susan E. James is an historian and independent researcher. She received her PhD from Cambridge University and is the author of Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen (Ashgate, 1999), The Feminine Dynamic in English Art (Ashgate, 2008), and a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).

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