Jane Barker (1652-1732) is increasingly being recognised as one of the most important English women writers of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. The author of both poems and novels (including novels containing numerous poems), Barker was largely ignored for many years but has recently been the subject of intense interest and investigation. Despite this, no complete, collected edition of Barker's poems has yet appeared, and the present volume is the first reproduction of her important early published volume, Poetical Recreations, to be issued in facsimile as a printed book (rather than on microfilm).

Robert C. Evans is Distinguished Teaching and Research Professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at Auburn University, Montgomery, USA

Contents:Preface by the General Editors; Introductory Note; Jane Barker, Poetical Recreations: Consisting of Original Poems, Songs, Odes &c. With several New Translations (1688).