The work was catalogued as “perhaps the most controversial book in the canon of seventeenth-century ‘female’ writers” and in enlarging on this long running argument or discussion as to the identity of Ephelia, I quoted from the entry provided by the Sotheby’s cataloguer, which included reference to the work’s modern editor, Maureen E. Mulvihill.
Dr. Mulvihill, I now know, takes great exception to this “inaccurate representation of my published scholarship”.
In order to understand her true views on the matter, I direct readers to visit her impressive website at millersville.edu/~resound/ephelia/.
Ephelia revealed
IN reporting the sale of the John R.B. Brett-Smith library at Sotheby’s on May 27 (Antiques Trade Gazette No 1646, July 3), I mentioned and illustrated the sale at £2800 of a work of 1679 called Female Poems on Several Occasions written by Ephelia.
