When eleven-year-old Lavinia Guasca began her new life as a lady-in-waiting at the court of Turin, she brought with her a parting gift from her father Annibal (1540-1619): a detailed guidebook he wrote to help steer her through the many pitfalls of court life. Lavinia had her father's Discourse published in 1586; this English translation is the first version published in any form since that time. The Discourse displays an incredibly far-sighted view of women's education. Annibal thought gifted young girls should develop their talents and apply them to careers outside the home. In the Discourse, he details the unique and extremely rigorous educational program to which he had subjected Lavinia almost from the cradle with this end in mind. To complete Lavinia's education, Annibal filled the Discourse with advice on spirituality and morality, health and beauty, and how to behave at court—everything a well-bred lady-in-waiting would need to know. This edition also includes an appendix that traces the later events of Lavinia's life through excerpts from her father's letters.

In this illuminating work, surveying 300 years and two nations, Sarah Gwyneth Ross demonstrates how the expanding ranks of learned women in the Renaissance era presented the first significant challenge to the traditional definition of "woman" in the West. An experiment in collective biography and intellectual history, The Birth of Feminism demonstrates that because of their education, these women laid the foundation for the emancipation of womankind.

The first comprehensive guide to women's promotion and use of textual culture, in manuscript and print, in Renaissance Italy.

During her lifetime, the gifted writer Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565-1645) was celebrated as one of the "seventy most famous women of all time" in Jean de la Forge's Circle of Learned Women (1663). The adopted daughter of Montaigne, as well as his editor, Gournay was a major literary force and a pioneering feminist voice during a tumultuous period in France. This volume presents translations of four of Gournay's works that address feminist issues. Two of these appear here in English for the first time—The Promenade of Monsieur de Montaigne and The Apology for the Woman Writing. One of the first modern psychological novels, the best-selling Promenade was also the first to explore female sexual feeling. With the autobiographical Apology, Gournay defended every aspect of her life, from her moral conduct to her household management. The book also includes Gournay's last revisions (1641) of her two best-known feminist treatises, The Equality of Men and Women and The Ladies' Complaint. The editors provide a general overview of Gournay's career, as well as individual introductions and extensive annotations for each work.

Elisabetta Caminer Turra (1751-96) was one of the most prominent women in eighteenth-century Italy and a central figure in the international "Republic of Letters." A journalist and publisher, Caminer participated in important debates on capital punishment, freedom of the press, and the abuse of clerical power. She also helped spread Enlightenment ideas into Italy by promoting and publishing Voltaire's latest works and translating new European plays-plays she herself directed, to great applause, on Venetian stages. Bringing together Caminer's letters, poems, and journalistic writings, nearly all published for the first time here, Selected Writings offers readers an intellectual biography of this remarkable figure as well as a glimpse into her intimate correspondence with the most prominent thinkers of her day. But more important, Selected Writings provides insight into the passion that animated Caminer's fervent reflections on the complex and shifting condition of women in her society-the same passion that pushed her to succeed in the male-dominated literary professions.

A contemporary of Shakespeare and Monteverdi, and a colleague of Galileo and Artemisia Gentileschi at the Medici court, Francesca Caccini was a dominant musical figure there for thirty years. Dazzling listeners with the transformative power of her performances and the sparkling wit of the music she composed for more than a dozen court theatricals, Caccini is best remembered today as the first woman to have composed opera. Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court reveals for the first time how this multitalented composer established a fully professional musical career at a time when virtually no other women were able to achieve comparable success. Suzanne G. Cusick argues that Caccini’s career depended on the usefulness of her talents to the political agenda of Grand Duchess Christine de Lorraine, Tuscany’s de facto regent from 1606 to 1636. Drawing on Classical and feminist theory, Cusick shows how the music Caccini made for the Medici court sustained the culture that enabled Christine’s power, thereby also supporting the sexual and political aims of its women. In bringing Caccini’s surprising story so vividly to life, Cusick ultimately illuminates how music making functioned in early modern Italy as a significant medium for the circulation of power.

Italian Literature before 1900 in English Translation provides the most complete record possible of texts from the early periods that have been translated into English, and published between 1929 and 2008. It lists works from all genres and subjects, and includes translations wherever they have appeared across the globe. In this annotated bibliography, Robin Healey covers over 5,200 distinct editions of pre-1900 Italian writings. Most entries are accompanied by useful notes providing information on authors, works, translators, and how the translations were received. Among the works by over 1,500 authors represented in this volume are hundreds of editions by Italy's most translated authors – Dante Alighieri, Machiavelli, and Boccaccio – and other hundreds which represent the author's only English translation. A significant number of entries describe works originally published in Latin. Together with Healey's Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English Translation, this volume makes comprehensive information on translations accessible for schools, libraries, and those interested in comparative literature.