This book considers the ways that family relationships (parental, marital, sibling or other) mimic, and stand in for, political ones in the Early Modern period,

Contends that, though early modern English canonical sources and sermons often urge the subordination of women, this was not indicative of public life, and that

This collection of essays examines women's involvement in politics in early modern England, as writers, as members of kinship and patronage networks, and as pet

Children born out of wedlock were commonly stigmatized as "bastards" in early modern France. Deprived of inheritance, they were said to have neither kin nor kin