Written Worlds. Non-Elite Writing in Seventeenth-Century England
Susan Wiseman
Synopsis "Written Worlds. Non-Elite Writing in Seventeenth-Century England"
Written Worlds explores how non-elite writers illuminate seventeenth-century England, tracing connections across social ranks from Derbyshire to London through manuscripts, songs, and everyday texts, revealing overlooked lives, networks, and landscapes alongside links to well-known figures.
What can writing by people far from the centres of power tell us about seventeenth-century England? Written Worlds begins in the Derbyshire village of Ashover with the writings of Leonard Wheatcroft and members of his family, Elizabeth Hawley and Titus Wheatcroft. From the hills and streams of the Peak District, Susan Wiseman's study works outward to trace connections between non-elite writers and others. Among the discussed figures are the disappeared Muggletonian school-owner Dorothy Carter, recipe-writer and note-keeper Jane Mosley, and the miscellanists and poets Isabella Whitney and Thomas Howell. Connections emerge up and down the social scale, from a birthday poem to William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, to the diary of apprentice shopkeeper Roger Lowe. Links also appear to well-known writers such as Thomas Hobbes and the musician Thomas Whythorne. Through manuscript songs, Wiseman additionally explores a minstrels' court and the peripatetic psalmist William Barton.
Written Worlds traces texts of journeys, explores writing in the walls of Derbyshire's caves, and considers the poetry and privations of the lead mines. It uses methods including microhistory, cutural history and landscape studies. Working from non-elite writing, it investigates the shaping of landscape and its subsequent history, including the building of the house, orchard, and gardens inherited by the naturalist Joseph Banks.
With chapters on verses and miscellany-making; love and love poetry; women's writing and lives; song, sociability and psalm culture; landscape; politics; and book-making and collecting, Written Worlds addresses key topics in seventeenth-century literature and culture. Writing outside elite circles can be as revealing as that of more privileged figures.
