"[I]n all civilized nations, in all ages of their progress, there have been individual women who by force of native endowment and through some favorable conjunction of circumstances have risen into prominence in realms not ordinarily open to the women of their time, and…there have been various interesting epochs when women have responded in fairly large numbers to some exceptional intellectual stimulus." This book ranges over the period from Henry VIII through the mid-eighteenth-century, identifying the "learned ladies in England" through an examination ofprinted and manuscript references to women and learning alongside learned books by women.