Domestic Politics and Family Absence

This edition of Robert Sidney's surviving letters to his wife Barbara Gamage Sidney provides a wealth of information about the Sidneys' family life. It also offers an extraordinary record of an early modern English household in which the wife was entrusted with the overall responsibility for the well-being of her family, and for managing a large estate in the absence of her husband. The volume includes an introduction and notes by the editors, as well as other contextual materials. The introduction specifically addresses the issue of Barbara's literacy, within the broader context of late-Elizabethan women's literacy.