Workshops: Goods

Workshop 13: Early Modern Goods and
Women's Manuscript Compilations: Poetry and Recipies

Conveners:

• Elizabeth Clarke, English, Nottingham Trent University
• Victoria Burke, English, Nottingham Trent University
• Sara Pennell, History, Victoria and Albert Museum
• Louise Curth, History, University of London Royal Holloway College

This workshop considered seventeenth-century women's manuscript compilations as repositories of various commodities. The characteristic writing practice of many women in the early modern period was to store valuable knowledge of many kinds in their manuscripts. Thus, manuscripts will contain accounts, inventories, recipes both medical and culinary, proverbs, poetry both transcribed and self-composed, and prayers. These are often juxtaposed within the same manuscript. The workshop offered investigations into several kinds of commodity represented within various manuscripts compiled by women. The main materials were photocopies of the manuscripts themselves, supported by the prototype of the electronic resource that the Perdita Project at Nottingham Trent University is preparing. This offered contextual material about the manuscript, biographical information about the compiler, contents of the rest of the manuscript and details of related manuscripts. We also circulated related printed and other material.

This workshop was interdisciplinary in literature and history. It offered investigations into women's control over medicine and remedies as demonstrated in the recipe books, at a time when medicine is being professionalised. Domestic technologies, and the use of traded goods, both utensils and ingredients, were also explored. Rhetoric as a reusable commodity, and women's participation in the market of commonplace culture, were the focus of another task. We also offered the study of manuscripts themselves as valuable commodities circulating amongst suppliers, customers and patrons.