SOURCE: Fitzmaurice, James. “Barker and the Tree of Knowledge at Cambridge University.” Renaissance Forum 3, no. 1 (spring 1998): 1-15.

In the following essay, Fitzmaurice examines the 1723 version of Barker's poem “An Invitation to my friends at Cambridge” to show that later in life the author was not as enamored of the opinions of academic men as she had been as a younger woman, because she saw the limitations of worldly knowledge and no longer felt she needed to justify her lack of formal education.

Jane Barker is perhaps most widely known these days as a writer of novellas who was active during the early eighteenth century. The 1997 Oxford University Press paperback edition of three of these pieces is testimony to considerable scholarly interest in her, particularly as a woman author who published her fiction and who was much read during her own lifetime. (Barker 1997) She is often mentioned in conjunction...