Lady Elinor Davies: The prophet as publisher

Lady Elinor Davies, who published between 1625 and 1652 more works than any other Englishwoman before her, believed herself to be the prophet of the apocalypse, divinely chosen to reveal that the apocalypses of Daniel and St John find their fulfillment in the events of the seventeenth century and thereby to proclaim the coming of the judgement and the end of time. Empowered by confidence in her gift and compelled by the urgency of her mission, Lady Elinor defied patriarchal authority when in 1633 she published prophecies attacking church and king, an act that brought her to trial and to prison and her prophecies to the bonfire. Lady Elinor then mythologized this trial: She, the woman-prophet-publisher, becomes the apocalyptic Woman in Travail, who triumphs over the monstrous embodiments of patriarchal power that persecute her and seek to destroy her work.