The Canonization of Italian Women Writers in Early Modern Britain

British women writing in the 16C and 17C had no first-hand knowledge of the works of their female counterparts in Italy, yet by 1823 the works of early modern Italian women writers formed a significant part of the holdings of the British Museum. This article considers some of the circumstances under which the lost writings of the Italian Renaissance women poets were recovered in 18C Britain, after more than two centuries of oblivion. It discusses the establishment of a national museum in 1753; the influence of the Grand Tour; the increased consumption of books and reading material of all kinds; growing interest in women writers, women's education, and women's rights; the production of library catalogues, literary histories, and anthologies promoting Italian women writers as a group; the birth of the Arcadian movement and the re-emergence of women as a culturally significant class in Italy; and the emergence of such Italian women as Luisa Bergalli and Rosalba Carriera as powerful cultural entrepreneurs. Chance played a part: the sale by the British Consul in Venice, Joseph Smith, of his library with its unique collection of Italian women authors' books, to the King of England in 1763 and its entrance into the British Museum. An epilogue notes that the reception of women writers in national histories remained variable and unstable: the celebrated women writers of early modern Italy entered the public sphere for the first time as treasures of the British Museum in 1823, yet some forty years later, the histories heralding the arrival of "the Renaissance" in Italy published by Burckhardt and Symonds again passed over in silence the once-renowned Italian women poets of that era. (Quotes from original text)