Originality, Plagiarism, and Posthumous Publication: Grace Gethin’s Reliquiæ Gethinianæ (1699)

Abstract

Abstract This article explores early modern ideas of originality by reconsidering the critical treatment of one of the first printed female-authored volumes of essays in English: Grace, Lady Gethin’s Misery’s Virtues Whet-stone. Reliquiæ Gethinianæ (1699). Previous scholars of Gethin’s work have used her unacknowledged intertextual borrowings from writers such as Francis Bacon and Joseph Hall to deride her work as unoriginal, plagiaristic, and uninteresting. By comparing Gethin’s essays to her source texts, this article reads Reliquiæ Gethinianæ’s intertextuality as a revealing insight into practices of commonplacing, the literary tastes of early modern women, and the importance of attending to unexceptional readers. It also attempts to reconstruct the intentions behind newly uncovered post-print editing of Reliquiæ Gethinianæ by Gethin’s mother. Manuscript citations made by Frances, Lady Norton in carefully selected copies of Reliquiæ Gethinianæ demonstrate the complex methods used to cultivate and maintain the integrity of Gethin’s posthumous reputation: highlighting her immersion in prestigious scholarly sources, and tactfully downplaying her reliance on Madeleine de Scudéry’s less reputable epic prose romance Clelia (1654–1660).