Francesca Peacock (UK)

I graduated from my undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature from Oxford in 2021. Since then I have worked as an arts journalist, writing for the New York Times, Telegraph, Spectator, and Financial Times amongst other publications. In 2023, my debut non-fiction book — Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish — was published. Pure Wit was a Spectator and History Today book of the year for 2023, and was well-reviewed across the press in both the US and UK. 

Spending so much time thinking about a woman from the 17th century oddly led me to be interested in medieval women's writing and lives — something I had enjoyed studying in my undergraduate degree. Having researched Margaret Cavendish's difficulty to conceive, I became intrigued by writing about infertility: about how women understand of, and describe, the inability to have children, or the moment a child is lost in a miscarriage or traumatic birth. Looking at 16th and 17th century accounts — with their Puritan or post-Reformation inflections — made me want to consider how medieval society understood the issue in literary, theological, and legal contexts. I am excited for the interdisciplinary opportunities provided by the MSt course, and the possibilities of pursuing my research across the boundaries of the medieval and early modern periods in further study.