In the following essay, King and Medoff offer an account of the life of Barker that contrasts with the biography that has been erroneously reconstructed from her fictional works.

In the following essay, King tells the story of Barker as a Jacobite novelist, showing the connections between the plots of her novels and the political activities and ideologies of the Stuart court.

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.

In the essay that follows, King explores Barker's participation in a complex literary community that also included men.

In the following essay, King discusses female-female relationships depicted in A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies. She notes that what may have been intended by Barker as a warning to women who experience same-sex desires can instead be interpreted as criticism of a patriarchal society.

In the following essay, Spencer claims that Barker's main concerns were to define herself as a woman and as a writer and to create for herself and her audience an acceptable self-image. Spencer also states that Barker's works are especially important to those interested in the history of women's writing and women's self-definition because they seem to be largely autobiographical.

In the following essay, King claims that the Magdalen manuscript of Barker's poems is particularly important for the glimpse it affords into Barker's writing life and her evolution as a artist; for the light it sheds on seventeenth-century English Catholicism, early Jacobitism, spiritual autobiography, and women's writing; and for the oppositions it discloses between public/private and political/domestic in writings about politics and affairs of state.

Below, McBurney discusses the effect the infamous publisher Edmund Curll had upon the popularity of Barker's romance novels.

In the following excerpt, Williamson examines some of the ironies of Barker's poetry, as well as the patterns found in Barker's novels which give advice for women regarding courting.

In the following essay, Bowers examines the poetry of Barker, a staunch Jacobite, to argue against the myth of Jacobite certainty, as the poet shows disappointment, uncertainty, and dark regret in her political choices despite her loyalty to the royalist cause.

In the following essay, King examines what A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies reveals concerning Barker's anxieties about the public's reception of her writing.

In the following excerpt, Spencer claims that, throughout her work, Barker is concerned with the creation of her self-portrait as a woman and a writer.

In the following excerpt, Williamson discusses Barker's novels and their themes of heroic love, parental authority about marriage, and the woman rescuer.

In the following excerpt, Doody elaborates on ways that Barker's descriptions of the dreams of her female characters emphasize the women's unheroic and subjective lives.

In the following excerpt, first published in 1920 and reprinted in 1964, Reynolds contends that Barker's novels explore the same material covered earlier in her verse. Reynolds also considers some of the circumstances of Barker's life that are revealed through her character Galesia.

In the following essay, Grieder divides early-eighteenth-century women's writings into two categories: one type salacious and gossipy, the other moralistic and didactic. The critic contends that Exilius, which fits into the latter group, stresses that conforming to societal expectations must supersede one's personal passion.

In the excerpt below, Grieder praises A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies for the historical importance of its authentic descriptions of ordinary life; its atypical heroine, Galesia; and its modernistic conclusion, which leaves some narrative conflicts unresolved.