Novelist, religious dissident, political poet, and sometime Jacobite spy, Jane Barker wrote on a remarkable variety of subjects and displayed a facility with an equally remarkable variety of genres. Most extraordinary, though, was her ability to manipulate the objects of female domesticity, an embroidered patch-work screen for example, as literary conceits to rival those of her male contemporaries. "A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies" (1723) and "The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen (1726), both part of The Galesia Trilogy, attest to her talents; they include realistic stories and...

Novelist, poet, manager of farm property, convert to Roman Catholicism, Jacobite in exile in France, and woman unmarried by choice, Jane Barker (1652-1732) wrote on a remarkable variety of subjects and displayed an equally remarkable variety of genres. Her multifaceted work is important in understanding the woman artist, the shifting literary marketplace, and the response of women to a society torn apart by endless wars, religious intolerance, and a legal and economic system that consistently disadvantaged them.

Love Intrigues (1713), A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies...