ROSALIND SMITH is a Lecturer in English at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has published articles on gender and poetry in the early modern period and is preparing a monograph on Marian textual practice.

'Smith shows that precedents of published women's writing can be as inhibiting as enabling, and therefore disrupts any smoothly progressive model of women's literary history.' - Times Literary Supplement 'Rosalind Smith has produced a well-organized and effective work, with much to recommend it...The strength of the work lies not only in its clearly defined remit but also in Smith's ability to range effortlessly from close textual analysis to a consideration of the wider context for these works, and to dovetail literary criticism with historical insight.' - Lucinda Becker, Modern Language Review

• Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Gender, Genre and Attribution in Early Modern Women's Sonnet Sequences and Collections 'In a mirrour clere': Anne Lock's Miserere mei Deus as Admonitory Protestantism Generating Absence: The Sonnets of Mary Stuart The Politics of Prosopopoeia: The Pandora Sonnets The Politics of Withdrawal: Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus and Lindamira's Complaint Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index