Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653) is, by all accounts, a phenomenon in early modernity: a woman who wrote and published in many genres, whose fame shone brightly

At a time when women were generally excluded from scholarly discourse in the intellectual centers of Europe, four extraordinary female letterate proved their pa

Between the years 1643 and 1649, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–80) and René Descartes (1596–1650) exchanged fifty-eight letters—thirty-two from Des

Born Françoise d'Aubigné, a criminal's daughter reduced to street begging as a child, Madame de Maintenon (1653-1719) made an improbable rise from impoverishe

Weaving together cultural history and critical imperial studies, this book shows how war and colonial expansion shaped seventeenth-century Venetian culture and