On this day in 1678, "Ephelia" had her first public writing licensed by the King's censor, thereby marking her official entry into the world of Restoration literature. The writing in question is a poem on the "Popish Plot" hysteria that was rocking the Court and all of England, but more interesting than poem or occasion is Ephelia herself. Once "a reputedly intractable case in the annals of English pseudonyma," she has now been almost conclusively identified, thanks to some recent, intrepid literary sleuthing. Ephelia now takes her clear place in the Age and the canon, and remains a symbol for all those contemporary women writers -- "Early Modern," as the scholars put it -- who would not be bullied into silence by a patriarchal literary establishment ... FULL STORY »
