Women, Food Exchange, and Governance in Early Modern England [electronic resource] / by Madeline Bassnett.

1. Introduction -- 2. Providential Gifts and Agricultural Plenty: The Psalmes of Mary Sidney Herbert -- 3. The Milk of Wholesome Government: Elizabeth Clinton' The Covntesse of Lincolnes Nvrserie -- 4. Prayerful Dining: The Diary of Margaret Hoby -- 5. The Quintessence of Good Governance: Protestant Hospitality in Mary Wroth's Urania -- 6. Shaping the Body Politic: Mobile Food and Transnational Exchange in Urania -- 7. Epilogue -- Bibliography -- Index -- .

This book is about the relationship of food and food practices to discourses and depictions of domestic and political governance in early modern women's writing. It examines the texts of four elite women spanning approximately forty years: the Psalmes of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke; the maternal nursing pamphlet of Elizabeth Clinton, Dowager Countess of Lincoln; the diary of Margaret, Lady Hoby; and Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth's prose romance, Urania. It argues that we cannot gain a full picture of what food meant to the early modern English without looking at the works of women, who were the primary managers of household foodways. In examining food practices such as hospitality, gift exchange, and charity, this monograph demonstrates that women, no less than men, engaged with vital social, cultural and political processes.