| This project is a recovery of the life and works of the early eighteenth-century poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist and shop owner, Elizabeth Boyd. It engages with original archival and genealogical research, and draws on a growing body of historical and theoretical analyses of lower and middling-class women's involvement in the circulation of political ideas through print in the first decades of the eighteenth century.;The political, commercial, and even philanthropic nature of Boyd's works meant that she was probably unknown (at least as a single writing identity) to London readers, apart from specialized patrons of political and court-sponsored art. The first chapter of the dissertation attempts to recover and retrace the life of the writer herself, and the subsequent four chapters are framed by exploration of her shifting relations with her benefactors and her movements in the printing and retailing trades.;The second chapter examines Boyd's entrance into print (very much from the bottom level of the trade) and her sale of her satirical talents at a very young age: a move that was prompted by her sole support of her impoverished family. The third chapter examines Boyd's attempt to integrate the publication of a novel with an ambition to open a stationery business and her (uncommon and unexplained) access to favours from the Whig government. The fourth chapter traces Boyd's evolving political conscience, as she uses her poetic and polemical talents to express a heightened awareness of humane concerns, especially the issues of poverty, childbirth, and marital abuse. The fifth chapter examines Boyd's uncommon gambles with genre by focussing, especially, on her publication of a drama and a periodical for women. |
