James Fitzmaurice is emeritus professor of English at Northern Arizona University and honorary research fellow at the University of Sheffield. He has published a great deal on Margaret Cavendish, and his screenplays have been selected for or won prizes at many film festivals. Naomi J. Miller is Professor of English and the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. She has published award-winning books on early modern women and gender and teaches courses on Shakespeare and his female contemporaries. Sara Jayne Steen has authored and edited five volumes largely on early modern women and theater, including The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, and has received awards for teaching and scholarship. She was faculty member, chair, and dean at Montana State University and is president emerita of Plymouth State University.

• List of Figures Acknowledgments 1. James Fitzmaurice, Naomi J. Miller, and Sara Jayne Steen: "Introduction: Biography, Biofiction, and Gender in the Modern Age" Section I: Fictionalizing Biography 2. Bárbara Mujica: "Sister Teresa: Fictionalizing a Saint" [Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582); practitioner: nun; author] 3. Catherine Padmore: "Portrait of an Unknown Woman: Fictional Representations of Levina Teerlinc, Tudor Paintrix" [Levina Teerlinc (1510/20–1576); visual artist] 4. Frima Fox Hofrichter: "An Interview with Dominic Smith, Author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos: Capturing the Seventeenth Century" [Judith Leyster (1609–1660) and Sara van Baalbergen (fl. 1631–1634); visual artists] 5. Susanne Woods: "Lanyer: The Dark Lady and the Shades of Fiction" [Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645); author] 6. Marina Leslie: "Archival Bodies, Novel Interpretations, and the Burden of Margaret Cavendish" [Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673); author] Section II: Materializing Authorship 7. Susan Frye: "Bess of Hardwick: Materializing Autobiography" [Elizabeth Talbot (1527?–1608); creator of textiles] 8. Sarah Gristwood: "The Queen as Artist: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart" [Mary Queen of Scots (1542–1587) and Elizabeth I (1533–1603); practitioners: queens; embroiderer; authors] 9. Marion Wynne-Davies: "'Very Secret Kept': Facts and Re-Creation in Margaret Hannay’s Biographies of Mary Sidney Herbert and Mary Wroth" [Mary Sidney Herbert (1561–1621) and Mary Wroth (1586–1652); authors] 10. Naomi J. Miller: "Imagining Shakespeare’s Sisters: Fictionalizing Mary Sidney Herbert and Mary Sidney Wroth" [Mary Sidney Herbert (1561–1621) and Mary Wroth (1586–1652); authors] 11. Linda Phyllis Austern: "Anne Boleyn, Musician: A Romance Across Centuries and Media"[Anne Boleyn (c. 1500–1536); musician] Section III: Performing Gender 12. Sheila T. Cavanagh: "Reclaiming Her Time: Artemisia Gentileschi Speaks to the Twenty-First Century" [Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1656); visual artist] 13. Hailey Bachrach: "Beyond the Record: Emilia and Feminist Historical Recovery" [Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645); author] 14. James Fitzmaurice: "Writing, Acting, and the Notion of Truth in Biofiction About Early Modern Women Authors" [Aphra Behn (1640–1689) and Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673); authors] 15. Emilie L. Bergmann: "Jesusa Rodríguez’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Reflections on an Opaque Body"[Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695); practitioner: nun; author] Section IV: Authoring Identity 16. Margaret F. Rosenthal: "From Hollywood Film to Musical Theater: Veronica Franco in American Popular Culture" [Veronica Franco (1546–1591); author] 17. Julia Dabbs: "The Role of Art in Recent Biofiction on Sofonisba Anguissola" [Sofonisba Anguissola (1532–1625); visual artist] 18. Stephanie Russo: "'I Am Artemisia': Art and Trauma in Joy McCullough's Blood Water Paint" [Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1656); visual artist] 19. Sara Jayne Steen: "The Lady Arbella Stuart, a 'Rare Phoenix': Her Re-Creation in Biography and Biofiction" [Arbella Stuart (1575–1615); letter writer] 20. Sara Read: "The Gossips' Choice: Extending the Possibilities for Biofiction with Creative Uses of Sources" [Jane Sharp (active 1671) and Sarah Stone (active 1701–1737); practitioners: midwives] 21. Michael Lackey: Afterword Index

Co-Honorable Mention for the 2022 Collaborative Project Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender (SSEMWG) "This innovative and groundbreaking volume addresses a gap in scholarship as it investigates the diverse approaches and strategies adopted by contemporary novelists, playwrights and screenwriters who are bringing women of the early-modern era to life for the public. Although early modern women increasingly appear in popular culture, such depictions have until now received little scholarly attention. Overall, this collection makes a significant contribution towards the growing field of biofiction, and will begin important conversations concerning how such fictionalizations can offer insight into both the early modern period and contemporary culture and its concerns."- Professor Lisa Walters, University of Queensland, Australia "The richly various essays in this collection, ranging over topics, including literature, embroidery, music and art, offer an extraordinary range of insights into the lived experience of women’s lives in the early modern period. But they do more than that: they also show how these women’s lives and works have informed and interacted with our own and continue to matter today."- Professor Lisa Hopkins, Head of Research Degrees in the Social and Economic Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam University, UK “… a remarkable collection of twenty short chapters that casts a spotlight on the =representation of women from the early modern period in a range of modern genres.” -Julia Novak, Biography, vol. 46, n.3, 2023