Longfellow, Erica 1975(?)–

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Longfellow, Erica 1975(?)–

PERSONAL: Born c. 1975. Hobbies and other interests: Cooking, film, travel, walking.

ADDRESSES: Office—School of Humanities, Kingston University, Penrhyn Rd., Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Kingston University, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, England, senior lecturer in English literature.

WRITINGS:

Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Contributor to books, including Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women's Studies, edited by Dale Spender and Cheris Kramarae, Routledge, 2000; and Early Modern Women's Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers of the Trinity-Trent Colloquium, Ashgate, 2004. Contributor to journals, including Gender and History and Journal of British Studies.

SIDELIGHTS: As a scholar of English literature, Erica Longfellow's research focuses on British women's writings in the seventeenth century. Her debut book, Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England, offers a study of women poets of this period and how they were influenced by the religion and politics of the time. While L.E. Semler, writing in Early Modern Literary Studies, bemoaned the trend toward overanalyzing literature and failing to appreciate it for its own artistic value, nonetheless noted that Longellow's book "is a useful addition to a growing body of scholarly literature that addresses early modern women poets specifically in relation to religion." Discussing the writings of such authors of the period as Lady Anne Southwell, Lucy Hutchinson, and Aemilia Lanyer, Longfellow describes how the social climate of their time influenced their poetry. Semler called Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England "a successful reinforcement and development of contemporary approaches to women writers and religion in early modern England." While it is not a "dazzling," work, according to the critic, it does offer "numerous thought-provoking concepts."