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Paperback. Condition: New. Vittoria Colonna's 1538 Rime, originally issued without her permission by a small Parma press, was the first of many editions of her poetry published during her lifetime. Born into one of the most powerful families in Rome and connected to many of the great political, religious, and artistic figures of the period, Colonna was uniquely positioned to transform the landscape of women's writing. The first woman to see her own poems appear in print in a single-author volume, she led the way for hundreds of other women of her time to publish their own works. Comprising more than one hundred and forty sonnets and two canzoni, the Rime expresses Colonna's anguish over the loss of her husband and her struggle both to preserve his memory and secure her own future. This volume presents the first complete English translation of the 1538 Rime and restores the original Italian texts from the blemished Parma printing and later composite editions, a boon to readers of both languages.

Paperback. Condition: New. An introduction to a new early modern woman writer that makes her manuscripts available in print for the first time.   This first print edition of two extant manuscripts by Dorothy Calthorpe (1648-1693) introduces a new seventeenth-century woman writer to the growing canon of early modern female authors. The edition provides transcriptions of the manuscripts and Calthorpe's will, as well as a hefty apparatus that features a comprehensive introduction to Calthorpe, her family, and her work; a glossary of persons who figured in her writing and her life; and two genealogical charts. Calthorpe's writings (including both prose and verse and ranging from Petrarchan love poems to roman à clef and devotional verse), and the thoughtfully constructed and illustrated volumes in which her texts appear, demonstrate the rich intellectual life of a previously unknown female writer and provide a compelling example of Restoration manuscript production.

Paperback. Condition: New. Two volumes by a seventeenth-century French gentlewoman and teacher, published in English for the first time.   According to the few historical records that mention Marguerite Buffet, she lived her entire life in seventeenth-century Paris where she taught French to aristocratic women. Buffet's vivid example of proper language use in New Observations on the French Language offers a rare glimpse into the life, habits, and culture of seventeenth-century France. She describes common errors in contemporary language use and gives examples of correct expressions for speaking and writing all the while encouraging women to aspire to higher levels of intellectual achievement.   In addition, her Praises of Illustrious Learned Women, a catalog of biographies of women who displayed exemplary intellect, wit, and conversation, includes a number of the author's contemporaries such as Anna Maria van Schurman and Madeleine de Scudéry. Buffet's collected praises of these women, many of whom were connected to the court of Louis XIV, show her unique position as both a participant in and historian of the intellectual and social world of the French salon.   This volume presents Buffet's work in its near entirety for the first time in English, bringing to light Buffet's unique contribution to the centuries-long debate concerning the status of women known as the querelle des femmes.

Paperback. Condition: New. The collected writings of Margaret More Roper, presented and annotated for classroom use. Margaret More Roper (1505-44) was, at the age of nineteen, the first early modern woman writer in Tudor England and the first nonroyal woman to have a book printed in the English language. As the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, Roper received a cutting-edge education in Latin and Greek that was virtually unprecedented for a woman. Besides gaining an international reputation for her outstanding erudition, Roper served as More's confidante during his imprisonment. Her correspondence from this period offers valuable insight into a key moment in English history. This Other Voice series edition recognizes Margaret More Roper as a notable historical figure in her own right and as one of the most learned women of her time. It publishes all her extant writings in modernized spelling, with annotations, a glossary, and a current bibliography of studies about her.

Paperback. Condition: New. Key insights into women's multi-dimensional roles as wives, widows, and mothers during the seventeenth century. Lady Mary Carey (c. 1609-c. 1680) was a noblewoman who examined her life and expressed her views in a handwritten manuscript that she intended for self-reflection and for sharing with restricted audiences of family and friends, rather than for print publication. Her poetry and prose, composed and revised between 1650 and 1658, were important enough to her inner circle, however, that her autograph manuscript was carefully copied by another hand in 1681. In addition to providing us with key insights into women's multidimensional roles as wives, widows, and mothers during the seventeenth century in England, Carey's work teaches us a great deal about a woman's deepest emotional and spiritual states while confronting the hardships of life-from the fears of childbearing to the sorrows over child loss to the terrors of war.

Paperback. Condition: New. The first-ever print edition of a play by one of the first women playwrights in England. E. Polwhele (c. 1651-c. 1691) was one of the first women to write for the stage in Restoration London. This book presents the first printed edition of Polwhele's first play, The Faithful Virgins, which until now has existed only in an unsigned manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. A tragicomedy apparently performed in London by the Duke's Company ca. 1669-1671, The Faithful Virgins is altogether different in tone from Polwhele's later, better-known prose comedy, The Frolicks; or, The Lawyer Cheated (1671). The introduction to this modern-spelling edition of The Faithful Virgins discusses the play in terms of radical changes in English stage practices following the restoration of the monarchy after England's civil war and situates Polwhele's play within the social and political life of seventeenth-century London.

Paperback. Condition: New. Christine de Pizan was born in Italy and moved to the French court of Charles V when she was four years old. She led a life of learning, stimulated by her reading and by her drive to engage with the cultural and political issues of her day. As a young widow she sought to support her family through writing, and she broke new ground by pursuing a life as an author and self-publisher, producing an astonishingly large and varied body of work. Her books, owned and read by some of the most important figures of her day, addressed politics, philosophy, government, ethics, the conduct of war, autobiography and biography, and religious subjects.The God of Love's Letter (1399), Christine de Pizan's first defense of women, is arguably her most succinct statement about gender. It also rebukes the thirteenth-century Romance of the Rose and anticipates Christine's City of Ladies. The Tale of the Rose (1402) responds to the growth in chivalric orders for the defense of women by arguing that women, not men, should choose members of the "Order of the Rose." Both poems are freshly edited here from their earliest manuscripts and each is newly translated into English.

Paperback. Condition: New. A page-turner featuring one of literature's earliest female protagonists. Written in 1685, Transaction or the Description of the Entire Life of an Orphan by Way of Plaintful Threnodies, often referred to as Orphan Girl, is a valuable, long-lost, seventeenth-century poetic text that documents women's writing in the early modern period. In this autobiographical account, Anna Stanislawska speaks confessionally and unsparingly about her life, from her infancy to her widowhood and withdrawal from the world. Stanislawska was an incomparable memoirist, revealing the depths of her private life in a manner not to be matched until modern times. One Body with Two Souls Entwined brings together this spirited poetic account with an in-depth introductory and literary commentary by Barry Keane. Together the book offers a remarkable piece of scholarly, translational, and dramaturgical work and puts it in context amid the backdrop of Polish history.

Paperback. Condition: New. An introduction to a new early modern woman writer that makes her manuscripts available in print for the first time.   This first print edition of two extant manuscripts by Dorothy Calthorpe (1648-1693) introduces a new seventeenth-century woman writer to the growing canon of early modern female authors. The edition provides transcriptions of the manuscripts and Calthorpe's will, as well as a hefty apparatus that features a comprehensive introduction to Calthorpe, her family, and her work; a glossary of persons who figured in her writing and her life; and two genealogical charts. Calthorpe's writings (including both prose and verse and ranging from Petrarchan love poems to roman à clef and devotional verse), and the thoughtfully constructed and illustrated volumes in which her texts appear, demonstrate the rich intellectual life of a previously unknown female writer and provide a compelling example of Restoration manuscript production.

Paperback. Condition: New. A page-turner featuring one of literature's earliest female protagonists. Written in 1685, Transaction or the Description of the Entire Life of an Orphan by Way of Plaintful Threnodies, often referred to as Orphan Girl, is a valuable, long-lost, seventeenth-century poetic text that documents women's writing in the early modern period. In this autobiographical account, Anna Stanislawska speaks confessionally and unsparingly about her life, from her infancy to her widowhood and withdrawal from the world. Stanislawska was an incomparable memoirist, revealing the depths of her private life in a manner not to be matched until modern times. One Body with Two Souls Entwined brings together this spirited poetic account with an in-depth introductory and literary commentary by Barry Keane. Together the book offers a remarkable piece of scholarly, translational, and dramaturgical work and puts it in context amid the backdrop of Polish history.

Paperback. Condition: New. Forty revealing personal letters written by a key figure from the Italian Renaissance. The most celebrated woman writer of the Italian Renaissance, Vittoria Colonna was known for her elegant poetry and use of the sonnet form to explore pressing religious questions. The selection of Colonna's letters presented here for the first time in a collected edition was written to and from writers, artists, popes, cardinals, employees, and family members. Together they place Colonna at the center of intersecting epistolary networks as a political actor, theological thinker, literary practitioner, and caring friend. Revealing a historical woman speaking and acting with force in the world, these letters constitute a vital tool for anyone seeking to understand Colonna's literary works. Newly translated, this work reveals new aspects and faces of the most celebrated woman writer of the Italian Renaissance.

Paperback. Condition: New. A collection of poems by the first English woman to publish secular poetry under her own name. Isabella Whitney (c. 1547-after 1624) was the first English woman to publish original secular poetry under her own name. She published two poetic miscellanies of poems: The Copy of a Letter (1567) and A Sweet Nosegay (1573), which include her own work as well as a total of six poems by five different male authors. This edition of her writings prints modernized texts of the complete miscellanies and adds to them six poems attributed to Whitney by largely twentieth-century critics. These poems provide a rich portrait of sixteenth-century female courtship and its dangers, a unique view of class and gender in Whitney's lifetime, and a portrait of London as a burgeoning market of practical goods and luxury items from foodstuffs to imported silk.

Paperback. Condition: New. A subversive novel from 1710 that questioned political and aesthetic ideologies in eighteenth-century France. This novel reflects a shift in French values at the turn of the eighteenth century, which saw increased interest in the private lives of the aristocracy and the pre-Enlightenment questioning of political and religious orthodoxies. Novels of fiction and leisure gained popularity, and it was during this time that Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, the Countess de Murat, published her second leisure novel, The Sprites of Kernosy Castle. Combining humor, social satire, and a proto-feminist outlook, Murat crafts a well-constructed plot where the supernatural is debunked. Murat's career was cut short when a series of "misdemeanors" related to the countess's homosexual tendencies led to her arrest in 1702. Sprites, which was released during a partial reprieve from prison, is the final published work of this independent-minded early feminist author.

Paperback. Condition: New. The first political treatise written by a woman. Christine de Pizan's The Book of the Body Politic is the first political treatise written by a woman. It not only advises the prince, but nobles, knights, and common people as well. It promotes the ideals of interdependence and social responsibility. Rooted in the mindset of medieval Christendom, The Book of the Body Politic heralds the humanism of the Renaissance, highlighting classical culture and Roman civic virtues. This new edition and translation offers a faithful rendering of Christine de Pizan's writing, as well as a thorough contextualization of her career as a political writer at the end of the Middle Ages in France. The Book of the Body Politic resounds to this day, urging for the need for probity in public life and the importance of responsibilities and rights.

Paperback. Condition: New. The two eighteenth-century texts translated here offer a rare glimpse into the creative lives of cloistered nuns in Asia, providing a valuable example of early modern "other voices" in a colonial context.  The Entrada de Bonifrate para Festa dos Reis, a shadow puppet play for the feast of the Kings, and the Cartepaço da Muzica, a songbook for the feast of St. John, showcase the imaginative minds of the nuns at the Indo-Portuguese Real Convento de Santa Mónica, Goa, India. Composed for private convent audiences, these texts blend Portuguese and Spanish baroque elements with local Goan traditions. The uncensored verses celebrate convent life, critique local social norms, and affirm the nuns' community identity, exhibiting the Mónicas' musical talents and literary sensibilities.

Paperback. Condition: New. The first translated collection of Hortense Mancini's correspondence. During the seventeenth century, Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin (1646-99), became an icon of women's emancipation. In 1668, she shocked Europe when she fled her coercive husband and began a nomadic exile. Her notoriety increased in 1675 with the publication of her memoir-one of the first to appear in French by a woman-and was later magnified by her stint as the royal mistress of Charles II of England and by her establishment of a freethinking salon in London. As a salonnière, an exile, and a litigant fighting for legal separation from her husband, Mancini's letters were a means of connection, collusion, and survival as well as cultural collaboration. Collected and translated here for the first time, this correspondence charts her struggle for autonomy in her own words.

Paperback. Condition: New. The first treatise of its kind to be written in a European vernacular. Around 1460, Michele Savonarola produced the extraordinary Mother's Manual for the Women of Ferrara, a gynecological, obstetrical, and pediatric treatise composed in the vernacular so that it could be read not only by the learned but also by pregnant and nursing mothers and the midwives and wet nurses who presided over childbirth. Savonarola's work is not merely a trivial set of instructions, but the work of a learned scholar who drew on, among others, the ancient Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen, and Avicenna's Canon of Medicine. The first of its kind, Savonarola's Mother's Manual helps readers understand both the development of late-medieval and early-modern obstetrics and gynecology, as well as the experiences of women who turn to advice books for help with reproductive issues. This book also provides a key to understanding why and how a new genre of book-the midwifery manual or advice book for pregnant women-arose in sixteenth-century Italy and eventually became a popular genre all over Europe from the early modern period to the present day.

Paperback. Condition: New. Published for the first time in full, a common woman's writings reveal the startling role she played in England's revolt against the monarchy.   In 1649, a seamstress named Elizabeth Poole appeared at the Whitehall debates in London to prophesy in front of Parliament's army shortly after it had defeated the crown in the English civil wars. Invited to help deliberate the fate of Charles I, Poole advised the army to spare the king's life but to put him on trial for tyranny and to enter into a new compact with the people. After her visions proved controversial, she was defamed as a prostitute and a witch. She retaliated by printing her prophecies, along with two new defenses of her original revelations. This collection publishes Poole's pamphlets in full for the first time.

Paperback. Condition: New. An engaging account of women's travels in the early modern period.  This book showcases three Frenchwomen who ventured far from home at a time when such traveling was rare. In 1639, Marie de l'Incarnation embarked for New France where she founded the first Ursuline monastery in present-day Canada. In 1750, Madame du Boccage set out at the age of forty on her first "grand tour." She visited England, the Netherlands, and Italy where she experienced firsthand the intellectual liberty offered there to educated women. As the Reign of Terror gripped France, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin fled to America with her husband and their two young children, where they ran a farm from 1794 to 1796. The writings these women left behind detailing their respective journeys abroad represent significant contributions to early modern travel literature. This book makes available to anglophone readers three texts that are rich in both historical and literary terms.

Paperback. Condition: New. A masterpiece of ethnographic observation on seventeenth-century Spain.   While mysteries remain in her biography, Madame d'Aulnoy's tremendous literary talent is finally being rediscovered. Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d'Aulnoy (1652-1705) was the first Frenchwoman to write, publicize, and publish the account of her travels into Spain as an independent woman. Considered the authority on Spain for nearly two centuries until historiographers labeled them as disreputable, Travels into Spain can now be appreciated for its ironic gaze on realities concealed from male travelers and Madame d'Aulnoy's unabashedly female and often playful voice. Her writing casts a unique light on gender relations, the condition of women, cultural biases, national rivalries, and religious superstitions at a critical time in early modern cultural and literary history. The first modern translation of Travels into Spain, this book situates Madame d'Aulnoy's account in its historical context. Travels into Spain is a masterpiece of ethnographic observation, expressing a woman's view on gender relations, marriage, religion, fashion, food, bullfights, and the Inquisition.

Paperback. Condition: New. Witty and dynamic lovers' dialogues for the stage.  The actress and author Isabella Andreini won international renown playing the bold, versatile, and intellectual inamorata of the commedia dell'arte. After her death, her husband Francesco Andreini continued publishing her works, among them the thirty-one amorosi contrasti-or lovers' debates- presented in this volume. Available in English for the first time, Lovers' Debates enables readers to envision the commedia dell'arte through the words of its most revered diva. Lovers flirt boldly, trade bawdy insults, exhibit their learning, and drive each other mad in stage dialogues that showcase Isabella's skill in composition and drama. Sparkling with wit and bursting with dynamic energy, these brilliant lovers' dialogues for the stage hold strong appeal not only for specialists in early modern literature and women's studies, but for enthusiasts, scholars, and practitioners of classic and contemporary theatre.

Paperback. Condition: New. Published for the first time in full, a common woman's writings reveal the startling role she played in England's revolt against the monarchy.   In 1649, a seamstress named Elizabeth Poole appeared at the Whitehall debates in London to prophesy in front of Parliament's army shortly after it had defeated the crown in the English civil wars. Invited to help deliberate the fate of Charles I, Poole advised the army to spare the king's life but to put him on trial for tyranny and to enter into a new compact with the people. After her visions proved controversial, she was defamed as a prostitute and a witch. She retaliated by printing her prophecies, along with two new defenses of her original revelations. This collection publishes Poole's pamphlets in full for the first time.

Paperback. Condition: New. A seventeenth-century play showing the reality of life for women.   Valeria Miani's Amorous Hope is a play of remarkable richness, subtlety, and verve. It presents a scathing exposure of society's double-standards and it champions women's dramatic agency by centering on the bleak reality they often faced, a reality that attempted to harm and silence its victims. The play's salient episodes reflect realities modern women still face today.   Miani's literary achievements attest to her emergence as a cultural protagonist alongside Europe's most talented women writers, such as Isabella Andreini, and she challenged the premodern notion that a woman's eloquence is an indication of her sexual promiscuity.

Paperback. Condition: New. The first published defense of women by a Netherlandish author. Jehan Baptista Houwaert's Excellence and Nobility of Women constitutes the eighth book of his Plain of the Nine Muses, or The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women (1582-1583), an immense conduct book for women in rhymed verse based on the many querelle texts of the French and Burgundian tradition but especially, in its French translation, on the pathbreaking Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex (1529) by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.  Like its model, Houwaert's work asserts not merely the equality but the superiority of women. It is unique in that it is addressed not to a wealthy noblewoman or princess, as were most such defenses, but more democratically to the "girls, unmarried women, wives, and widows of Belgica"-all of them!

Paperback. Condition: New. Witty and dynamic lovers' dialogues for the stage.  The actress and author Isabella Andreini won international renown playing the bold, versatile, and intellectual inamorata of the commedia dell'arte. After her death, her husband Francesco Andreini continued publishing her works, among them the thirty-one amorosi contrasti-or lovers' debates- presented in this volume. Available in English for the first time, Lovers' Debates enables readers to envision the commedia dell'arte through the words of its most revered diva. Lovers flirt boldly, trade bawdy insults, exhibit their learning, and drive each other mad in stage dialogues that showcase Isabella's skill in composition and drama. Sparkling with wit and bursting with dynamic energy, these brilliant lovers' dialogues for the stage hold strong appeal not only for specialists in early modern literature and women's studies, but for enthusiasts, scholars, and practitioners of classic and contemporary theatre.

Paperback. Condition: New. Multiple conflicting perspectives come together in this collection to provide a Rashomon-style account of marriage, fraud, and trickery in seventeenth-century England.   Mary Carleton was an ordinary woman from Canterbury who entered historical records when she was accused of bigamy. The seven pamphlets in this edition focus on the bigamy trial of Mary Carleton, in which the accused eloquently defends herself and is ultimately acquitted. Written in the early years of the English Restoration, they demonstrate that narratives presenting what "she said" and what "he said" can reveal, forcefully and painfully, how truth can be fragmented in the different arenas of law, love, and politics. Through their disparate accounts of a marriage gone wrong, these pamphlets reinforce the social status quo even while they radically shatter the very foundations that give it heft. In asking readers to question absolutes, they unmask the precarious relationship between words and the world.

Paperback. Condition: New. A collection of texts by a pioneering seventeenth-century French woman author.   Comprising texts by Madeleine de Scudéry, including many from her novel Clélie, this volume focuses on the story of Lucretia, the Roman matron whose rape and suicide led to the downfall of the Roman monarchy. Through her work, Scudéry seeks to contrast the enormous cultural contributions of women with their physical vulnerability and to propose an alternative to sexual violation, as envisioned on the Map of the Land of Tender that charts an imaginary land in the novel and outlines a path toward love. In Scudéry's version of this tale, Lucrece and her beloved, Brutus, follow the path of tender friendship. Scudéry contradicts history's characterization of Lucrece as craving glory in the form of fame. Indeed, contrary to ancient sources, Lucrece's glory will be her decision to sacrifice herself secretly for her tender friend.

Paperback. Condition: New. A collection of inventive writings in letter form from a sixteenth-century star of commedia dell'arte. Isabella Andreini (1562-1604) was a commedia dell'arte diva who toured Italy and France as part of the Compagnia dei Comici Gelosi. Letters is a collection of epistles written by Andreini in fictional, anonymous, male, and female voices, a "hermaphroditic" alternation of gender unlike any that had been seen in letter writing to that time. In her letters, Andreini remade the humanistic epistolary genre into a distinctive fusion of literary and dramatic performance. The guise of epistolary intimacy cedes to a knowing artificiality, which allows for the emergence of Andreini's modern critique of the gendered self as a uniform entity. The collection centers on love and examines-from surprising perspectives-pertinent issues such as death, the birth of a girl, prostitution, patriarchal marital practices, love in old age, courtiership, country and city life, human nature, and defenses and critiques of both sexes.

Paperback. Condition: New. A collection of poems by a pivotal figure in the literary culture of Stuart England. William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke, was a pivotal figure in the literary and political cultures of Stuart England. He wrote poetry primarily for social occasions: A debate with a friend, seductions or apologies to beloveds, or support for a deceased political ally. This volume collects his work along with an introduction, detailed notes, and other apparatus that explore the networks in which the poems circulated, the interpretive contexts suggested in miscellanies, and alternative readings revealed through scribal variants. The book also features five contemporary musical settings.

Paperback. Condition: New. This translated edition of Madame de Maintenon's school plays showcases their emphasis on the importance of girls' self-reliance and resilience in an accessible and engaging format for modern students. Madame de Maintenon's Dramatic Proverbs provides unprecedented access to an important transitional marker between the society games of the salon and the education theater of the eighteenth century. Composed for the impoverished female pupils at the boarding school she and King Louis XIV founded at Saint-Cyr, Maintenon's dramatic proverbs crucially reveal the values emphasized in female education at the end of the seventeenth century-a period plagued by economic crisis and growing aristocratic poverty. Some of the first to exclusively express a woman's point of view, Maintenon's dramatic proverbs challenged traditional female education and promoted improved conditions for women. The proverbs contributed uniquely to improvisational educational theater, inaugurating a tradition that continued well into the eighteenth century. This edition of the plays aims to privilege accessibility and accuracy so that twenty-first-century students can act out, interpret, and discuss these historical texts.