The essays in this volume analyze strategies adopted by contemporary novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and biographers interested in bringing the stories of early modern women to modern audiences. It also pays attention to the historical women creators themselves, who, be they saints or midwives, visual artists or poets and playwrights, stand out for their roles as active practitioners of their own arts and for their accomplishments as creators. Whether they delivered infants or governed as monarchs, or produced embroideries, letters, paintings or poems, their visions, the authors argue, have endured across the centuries. As the title of the volume suggests, the essays gathered here participate in a wider conversation about the relation between biography, historical fiction, and the growing field of biofiction (that is, contemporary fictionalizations of historical figures), and explore the complicated interconnections between celebrating early modern women and perpetuating popular stereotypes about them.

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. Imperfect Alchemist (Allison and Busby, 2020) launches a series of novels called Shakespeare’s Sisters.

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.Introduction: Biography, Biofiction, and Gender in the Modern Age (James Fitzmaurice, Naomi J. Miller, and Sara Jayne Steen)
Section I: Fictionalizing Biography
2. (Barbara Mujica) Sister Teresa: Fictionalizing a Saint
3. (Catherine Padmore) Portrait of an Unknown Woman: Fictional Representations of Levina Teerlinc, Tudor Paintrix
4. (Frima Fox Hofrichter) An Interview with Dominic Smith, Author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos: Capturing the Seventeenth Century
5. (Susanne Woods) Lanyer: The Dark Lady and the Shades of Fiction
6. (Marina Leslie) Archival Bodies, Novel Interpretations, and the Burden of Margaret Cavendish
Section II: Materializing Authorship
7. (Susan Frye) Bess of Hardwick: Materializing Autobiography
8. (Sarah Gristwood) The Queen as Artist: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart
9. (Marion Wynne-Davies) ‘Very Secret Kept’: Facts and Re-Creation in Margaret Hannay’s Biographies of Mary Sidney Herbert and Mary Wroth
10. (Naomi J. Miller) Imagining Shakespeare’s Sisters: Fictionalizing Mary Sidney Herbert and Mary Sidney Wroth
11. (Linda Phyllis Austern) Anne Boleyn, Musician: A Romance Across Centuries and Media
Section III: Performing Gender
12. (Sheila T. Cavanagh) Reclaiming Her Time: Artemisia Gentileschi Speaks to the Twenty-First Century
13. (Hailey Bachrach) Beyond the Record: Emilia and Feminist Historical Recovery
14. (James Fitzmaurice) Writing, Acting, and the Notion of Truth in Biofiction About Early Modern Women Authors
15. (Emilie L. Bergmann) Jesusa Rodríguez’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Reflections on an Opaque Body
Section IV: Authoring Identity
16. (Margaret F. Rosenthal) From Hollywood Film to Musical Theater: Veronica Franco in American Popular Culture
17. (Julia Dabbs) The Role of Art in Recent Biofiction on Sofonisba Anguissola
18. (Stephanie Russo) ‘I Am Artemisia’: Art and Trauma in Joy McCullough’s Blood Water Paint
19. (Sara Jayne Steen) The Lady Arbella Stuart, a ‘Rare Phoenix’: Her Re- Creation in Biography and Biofiction
20. (Sara Read) The Gossips’ Choice: Extending the Possibilities for Biofiction with Creative Uses of Sources
21. Afterword (Michael Lackey)
Index