"Shut up in a Countrey Grange": The Provenance of Lady Hester Pulter's Poetry and Prose and Women's Literary History

Recent scholarly emphasis on the public nature of manuscript circulation has highlighted the important contributions women made to a wide range of literary, intellectual, and social discourses. Against this backdrop, BC MS Lt q 32, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (compiled ca. 1660) poses something of a problem. During Hester Pulter's lifetime, it did not circulate beyond her immediate family. After her death, it remained within the household; it was annotated by an eighteenth-century reader but never printed. The anomalous history of BC MS Lt q 32 makes it a useful test case of our ideas of women's authorship and manuscript authorship in general. It reveals how histories of publication affect our understanding of women writers and how patterns of preservation shape our approach to literary studies.