This is the first study to reconstruct the political origins of English women's poetry between the execution of Charles I and the death of Queen Anne. Carol Barash's book shows that, between Katherine Philips (1632-64) and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), an English women's poetic tradition developed as part of the larger political shifts in these years, and particularly in women writers' fascination with the figure of the female monarch. Writers discussed include Aphra Behn, Katherine Philips, Anne Killigrew, Jane Barker, and Anne Finch.

Based on extensive archival research in England and the United States, English Women's Poetry, 1649-1714 argues that ideas about women's voices and women's communities were crucial to the shaping of an English national literature after the civil wars. Women enter print culture - as poets and as women - by situating their writing in defence of embattled monarchy. Women poets are especially fascinated with the figure of the female monarch (both real and mythic). Their sense of poetic legitimacy derives from the communities they generate around figures of female authority, particularly James II's second wife, Mary of Modena, and later Queen Anne.