The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works. Series II: Printed Writings, 1641–1700: Part 3, vol. 5: Elizabeth Cellier, by Elizabeth Cellier (review)

169 pecially the Marlboroughs’. They were also Manley’s ticket to a position on ‘‘the Tory writing team.’’ What had been Manley’s aspiration all along is sealed, for all practical purposes, by her appointment to the editorship of the Examiner . As a member of the team, she wrote ‘‘several little pamphlets and papers ’’ that helped maintain Tory party minister Harley’s ascendancy over his most important rival, Bolingbroke. Ms. Herman’s research into the complexities of the Harley/Bolingbroke battle for Tory leadership is exhaustive and compelling. Situating Manley in a complex political setting, she demonstrates convincingly that Manley was a major player. In fact, the single most important corrective of Ms. Herman’s study illuminates the relationship between Swift and Manley. Ms. Herman makes it clear that Swift was a genuine friend to Manley . His remarks regarding her indebtedness to him were not proffered to discredit her so much as to protect his ego and maintain his sense of self in relation to personal friends. It is past literary historians who are to blame for the blind faith in Swift’s words that has obscured Manley’s contribution. Ms. Herman provides a way to correct our misapprehensions . Manley was simply a better propagandist than Swift. Swift recognized that, and so did Harley. The Prime Minister preferred Manley to Swift for writing the official account of the Marquis de Guiscard’s assassination attempt on him. His loyalties divided, Swift made serious missteps in reporting this event. He wrote a piece for the Examiner that asserted the assassination had been designed for Bolingbroke. Manley’s official version—implying that the attempt, really meant for the Queen, was staved off by Harley—was much more palatable (obviously) to Harley, who would emerge victor (as well as royal savior) in the power struggle. Perhaps Manley simply gambled and signed on with the winning side whereas Swift tried to keep his options open. Nevertheless, it is disquieting to realize that Manley has not yet received credit in this dispute. Ms. Herman’s study moves from Manley’s work as propagandist to her writing for the stage. This poignant discussion treats seriously the central conflict of Manley’s personal value system. She was a Tory—a Hanoverian Tory, whose problem was to justify the support of monarchy in the face of regicide and settlement. As Ms. Herman puts it, ‘‘the plays were her arenas for debate.’’ Each of Manley’s dramatic works represents the arguments on both sides, yet none comes to a clear conclusion. In her endeavors as a playwright, Manley offers testimony to the intellectual pain caused by the conflicts of her time. The Business of a Woman offers us a Manley whom we must take seriously as a writer and as a political force. Some of her notions are unpalatable. Her concern about the ‘‘purity’’ of the British ‘‘race’’ rankles. Her willingness to argue politically involves, sometimes, the compromising of principle. Still, thanks to Ms. Herman’s study we can face Manley on her own terms. Having surmounted obstacles as a ‘‘woman writer,’’ she can be assessed, as Ms. Herman demonstrates, for what she wrote and who she was. Elizabeth Kraft University of Georgia The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works. Series II: Printed Writings, 1641–1700: Part 3, vol. 5: Elizabeth Cellier, selected 170 and introd. Mihoko Suzuki. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. $99.95; £60. This volume brings together four pamphlets by Elizabeth Cellier, the ‘‘Popish midwife,’’ written in 1680 and 1687; thirteen about her from 1680– 1682; attacks by her enemies; and accounts of her trials for treason and libel. As Ms. Suzuki points out in the lively and informed Introduction, Cellier’s quality was evident even in the material qualities of her texts (her pamphlets were issued on far better quality paper than those written against her). Why does Cellier matter? Her life and works are a kaleidoscope of the life and thoughts of a nonaristocratic woman at the end of the seventeenth century. Born a Protestant but converted to Catholicism through her marriage to the French merchant Peter Cellier, she found herself at the center of political activity when papers, intended to...