The Cambridge Edition of Works of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea; Early Manuscript Books, Volume 1 only

This is the first ever complete critical edition of the writings of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661–1720), including work printed in her lifetime and material left in manuscript form at her death. Textual analysis, based on print and manuscript copies in repositories across the United Kingdom and the United States, reveals her revision processes and uses of manuscript and print. Extensive commentary clarifies her techniques, sources, contexts, and diction. A detailed essay traces the history of her works' reception and transmission. The result is a complete view of her achievements that will promote more accurate assessments of her contributions to literary and cultural shifts, including perspectives on literary value, women's equality, religion, and affairs of state. This first volume provides established texts of Finch's early manuscript books, including Poems on Several Subjects and Miscellany Poems with Two Plays written under her pen name, Ardelia.

Jennifer Keith is an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she has taught since 1997. She is the author of Poetry and the Feminine from Behn to Cowper (2005) and numerous essays on poetry from the Restoration to the Romantic era. With the staff of the University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro she developed The Anne Finch Digital Archive, an open-access site that supplements this edition. Keith and Claudia Thomas Kairoff were awarded a long-term fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Folger Shakespeare Library for work on this edition. Keith also received a three-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant for this critical edition and the digital archive. She is a member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Claudia Thomas Kairoff is Professor of English at Wake Forest University, where she has taught since 1986. She is the author of Alexander Pope and his Eighteenth-Century Women Readers (1994) and Anna Seward and the End of the Eighteenth Century (2012), and co-editor, with Catherine Ingrassia, of 'More Solid Learning': New Critical Perspectives on Alexander Pope's Dunciad (2000). She has written numerous articles and book chapters on Pope and on women poets. Kairoff and Jennifer Keith were awarded a long-term fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Folger Shakespeare Library for work on this edition. She is a member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and of the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.