Catherine Parr

The first woman in England to publish an original work under her own name, Catherine Parr was the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII. An exceptionally well-educated, influential and politically astute woman, she was also a committed religious reformer. Her landmark 1545 work, ‘Prayers or Meditations’, became a commercial success, followed by her deeply personal theological treatise, ‘The Lamentation of a Sinner’. Writing during a turbulent religious reformation, Parr utilised her high social standing to champion Protestant-leaning reforms and make religious texts accessible in the English vernacular. Her courage to claim public authorship challenged the rigid gender norms of the Tudor period, permanently expanding the boundaries of intellectual expression for women in Europe. Delphi’s Renaissance Collection provides eReaders with rare and prominent works of literature, science, history, biography and philosophy from the fifteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries. A pivotal period of human development, the Renaissance witnessed the dismantling of medieval scholasticism, birthing modern European languages and shifting the human consciousness from a god-centric worldview to a humanistic perspective. This eBook presents Parr’s complete published works, with illustrations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)