"While Lady Mary Carey’s poetry has been available in small excerpts in anthologies, this is the first attempt to gather her known writings, prose and poetry, in a single authoritative edition—one that establishes that Carey was an active participant in probably more than one coterie network and was conversant with multiple genres of spiritual writing, from mothers’ legacies, elegies, and prayers to conversion narratives and autobiographical meditations. While Carey matches the description of a good/proper early modern woman in the period’s prescriptive writings, her volume also contains robust questioning of male superiority, as well as a poignant challenge to the God who took so many of her children at an early age. Her writings have much to show us about the ways in which literate seventeenth-century Englishwomen navigated patriarchal environments."

Margaret Ezell, Distinguished Professor of English, Texas A&M University