Early Modern Dutch and English Women Across Borders

Abstract

Abstract England and the Dutch Republic had a complex relationship to each other in the early modern period. Recent scholarship has been exploring women transnationally, looking at how they crossed borders both in physical terms of travel and in less tangible ways. This chapter applies this approach to early modern women from England and the Dutch Republic by looking closely at examples of women who addressed Anglo-Dutch relationships in a variety of ways. The chapter explores intellectual networks and ties between women and men in England and the Dutch Republic; women stationers who moved between England and the Dutch Republic; and women’s poems about the other country. Using theories of the public sphere, the chapter examines how their work represented them as figures with public standing. They show the need for cross-cultural and transnational approaches that acknowledge the rich variety with which women looked across the Channel.