Friendship's shadows : women's friendship and the politics of betrayal in England, 1640-1705 / Penelope Anderson.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [260]-281) and index.

Indemnity for enemies, oblivion for friends: changing political allegiances in the English civil wars -- "Obligation here is injury": exemplary friendship in Katherine Philips's coterie -- The garden of Epicurus and the garden of Eden: friendship's counsel in De rurum natura and Order and disorder -- "Women, like princes, find no real friends": the manscript tradition and Katherine Philips's reputation in Lucy Hutchinson's writings -- Covert politics and separatist women's friendship: Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell.

"Penelope Anderson's original study changes our understanding both of the masculine Renaissance friendship tradition and of the private forms of women's friendship of the eighteenth century and after. It uncovers the latent threat of betrayal lurking within politicized classical and humanist friendship, showing its surprising resilience as a model for political obligation undone and remade. Incorporating authors from Cicero to Abraham Cowley and Margaret Cavendish to Mary Astell, the book focuses on two extraordinary women writers, the royalist Katherine Philips and the republican Lucy Hutchinson. And it explores the ways in which they appropriate the friendship tradition in order to address problems of conflicting allegiances in the English Civil Wars and Restoration. As Penelope Anderson suggests, their writings on friendship provide a new account of women's relation to public life, organized through textual exchange rather than bodily reproduction." [Publisher's description].