Author: Jane Barker

Jane Barker (16521732) was a popular English fiction writer, poet, and a staunch Jacobite. She went into self-imposed exile when James II fled England during the Glorious Revolution in 1688. Although not known for her letter writing, four extant letters are located in the British Library and within the Magdalen Manuscript at the Oxford Magdalen library, written between 1670-88. Jane Barker was one of the first female authors to publish writings both in manuscript and print form, allowing modern scholars to study “the passage of Barker”s poetry from coterie circles to larger, more impersonal communities of readers”. Never married, Jane Barker died quietly in 1732.