CFP: Women from the Parsonage: Pastors’ Daughters as Writers, Salonnières,
Translators, and Educators

Many prominent writers and thinkers, especially from the second half of the seventeenth into the nineteenth century, were the sons of pastors. The advantages of their upbringing and especially the education they received in the parsonage, most often from their pastor-fathers themselves, has been acknowledged and highlighted. However, the upbringing and privileged education of pastor-daughters have rarely been acknowledged and thus have received little attention. A surprising number of women writers from this period, most prominently the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen, were brought up and educated by their pastor-fathers, but little attention has gone to the favored education they received at the hand or direction of their pastor-fathers and how, in turn, their education inspired literary production. There are many less recognized women writers who also emerged from parsonages to become important writers, celebrated salonnières, accomplished translators, or distinguished educators in their time. In the Protestant regions of Europe these women put the privileged education they had received in their fathers’ parsonages to good use, taking part in public literary, intellectual, and pedagogical discourse by publishing in such genres as autobiographies, novels, poetry, treatises on education, travel writing, and translations. Essays for the proposed edited volume investigate individual lives, education, and works of well known as well as lesser known daughters of clergymen from the long eighteenth century who, encouraged by their favored education, took up the pen to contribute to the literary culture of their time.
If you like to contribute to this comparative investigation about pastors’ daughters, e-mail a 300-word proposal to Cindy K. Renker (cindy.renker@utdallas.edu) by June 31st. Please include a brief CV with your submission. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by September 10, 2013. The anticipated submission date for completed articles (6,000 to 6,500 words) is January 15, 2014.

Cindy K. Renker (University of Texas at Dallas) Email: cindy.renker@utdallas.edu