Think Mary, Queen of Scots and a few key facts probably come to mind: she was Catholic, she was imprisoned and she had her head chopped off. But a poet who offers insight into 16th-century women’s writing and what it was like to be a queen? Not so much.
Some 39 poems have been attributed to Mary, some circulated only in manuscript, some written in the margins of her prayer book, and others published and circulated widely in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Rosalind Smith is Associate Professor, School of Humanities and Social Science at University of Newcastle, Australia. Her primary field of research is Renaissance literature, specialising in women's poetry, and the relationships between form, genre, politics and history in the period. She is the lead investigator on a collaborative ARC funded project examining the material cultures of early modern women's writing, involving seven researchers from six universities in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. With her colleague Dr Trisha Pender, she coordinates the Early Modern Women Research Network.
Her secondary field is in true crime writing in Australia, from the 19th century to the present, again with an interest in gender: how women writers contributed to this genre and how women are represented within it.
