Collections/Dictionaries

236Rocky Mountain Review The first major publication to take advantage of O'Donnell is The Uncollected Verse ofAphra Behn, edited with introduction and notes by Germaine Greer. With the goal ofeventually producing an entire new edition ofBehn, Greer has begun by assembling all the poetry not included in the six-volume Summers edition, some of which has not been reprinted since Behn's lifetime. After an overview ofthe flawed Summers set, sixteen poems are reprinted, including those to Charles II, James ?, the newly born Prince ofWales, and to Queens Catherine and Mary II. Verses to Creech and Roger L'Estrange are also present, along with Behn's translations of "Aesop's Fables" and Cowley's "Of Plants, Sylva." All are accompanied by excellent notes. While there are some typographical errors, and Lady Anne Spencer was the daughter of the Earl of Sunderland, not the Earl of Cumberland (189), Greer has produced the long awaited first step toward a complete scholarly edition of Aphra Behn. COLLECTIONS/DICTIONARIES Women Writers ofthe Seventeenth Century, edited by Katharina M. Wilson and Frank J. Warnke. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. 545 p. Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women's Verse, edited by Germaine Greer, Susan Hastings, Jeslyn Medoff, and Melinda Sansone . New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1988. 477 p. A Dictionary ofBritish and American Women Writers, 1660-1800, edited by Janet Todd. Rev. ed. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987. 344 p. British Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, edited by Janet Todd. New York: Continuum, 1989. 762 p. To the growing list of studies on the early modern period can now be added Women Writers ofthe Seventeenth Century, edited by Katharina M. Wilson and the late Frank J. Warnke, a continuation ofthe earlier Medieval Women Writers (1984) and Women Writers ofthe Renaissance and Reformation (1987), both edited by Wilson. The newest volume features another impressive selection oftwenty writers from Europe and England and, as with the earlier volumes, contains a biography, a sampler of works, and bibliographies for each entry. Sverre Lyngstad's chapter, "Leonora Christina: The Danish Princess," draws a wider audience to Leonora Christina, Countess Ulfeldt, a cousin ofEngland's Charles ?. During the twenty-two years ofher imprisonment the Countess wrote her powerful Memory ofSorrow, considered the greatest work of seventeenthcentury Danish literature and the finest memoir of that language. Memory of Sorrow has seen two English publications, one in the late nineteenth century and a better, but still flawed, 1929 edition. Lyngstad's newly translated excerpts, extending to fourteen pages, give hints ofthe richness ofthe original document and, I hope, will inspire someone to give us a first-rate English translation of this autobiography. "Sibylle Schwarz: Prodigy and Feminist," by Susan L. Clark, introduces a Book Reviews237 nearly forgotten German poet whose life paralleled the ferocious Thirty Years' War. The "Pomeranian Sappho," whose entire body of verse was written before her seventeenth year, was well known in her own century—"we have women in Germany whose poetic skills would put men to shame" (433). Clark's thirteen pages of new translations uncover yet another talented writer and again illustrate the need for a full translation. Probably the first female autobiography from Italy is discussed in Valeria Finucci's "Camilla Faà Gonzaga: The Italian Memorialist." Ruth Lundelius examines Ana Caro, a long forgotten dramatist from the Spanish Golden Age. Marie de Gournay's chapter by Maya Bijvoet contains an excerpt from Gournay 's "The Equality of Men and Women." The essay with which I find some problems is Joyce L. Irwin's "Anna Maria van Schurman: Learned Woman of Utrecht," for there is too much dependence on Una Birch's unreliable Anna van Schurman: Artist, Scholar, Saint (1909). For information about van Schurman's closest friend, Princess Elizabeth, Irwin unfortunately used M. P. R. Blaze de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess Palatine (1853), rather than Elizabeth Godfrey's somewhat more reliable A Sister ofPrince Rupert (1909), which took advantage of the newly discovered correspondence between Elizabeth and Descartes, and corrected some serious misrepresentations in the earlier publication. The Princess was a niece of Charles I of England , an association providing a better explanation for the connection between van...