Women’s Writing in Stuart England: The Mother’s Legacies of Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Joscelin, and Elizabeth Richardson

The form in which 17th century women chose to give maternal advice, the ‘mother’s legacy’ reflects the Stuart preoccupation with meditating upon death and the significance with which deathbed blessings or pronouncements were imbued. The three presented here, with introductions and notes, include Elizabeth Joscelin’s legacy, written shortly before her death in childbirth and published, with certain changes, by a chaplain in 1624. This edition reproduces Joscelin’s own manuscript for the first time.