Through fifteen essays that work from a rich array of primary sources, this collection makes the novel claim that early modern European women, like men, had a youth. European culture recognised that, between childhood and full adulthood, early modern women experienced distinctive physiological, social, and psychological transformations. Drawing on two mutually shaped layers of inquiry — cultural constructions of youth and lived experiences — these essays exploit a wide variety of sources, including literary and autobiographical works, conduct literature, judicial and asylum records, drawings, and material culture. The geographical and temporal ranges traverse England, Ireland, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, and Mexico from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. This volume brings fresh attention to representations of female youth, their own life writings, young women’s training for adulthood, courtship, and the emergent sexual lives of young unmarried women.

Elizabeth S. Cohen is Professor of History at York University in Toronto. She has published Daily Life in Renaissance Italy, with Thomas Cohen, and articles on themes including women, honour, work, crime, prostitutes, artists, and orality in early modern Rome.Margaret Reeves teaches English literature at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She co-edited Shell Games: Studies in Scams, Frauds, and Deceits (1300-1650), co-authored a history of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, and has published essays on literary history as well as early modern women's writing.

Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsContributor NotesIntroductionElizabeth S. Cohen and Margaret ReevesPart 1 Concepts and representations 1. 'A Prospect of Flowers': Concepts of Childhood and Female Youth in Seventeenth-Century British CultureMargaret Reeves 2. A Roving Woman: The Rover, Part 1 and Hellena's Self-Creation of YouthSarah Morris 3. 'She is but a girl': Talk of Young Women as Daughters, Wives, and Mothers in the Records of the English Consistory Courts, 1550-1650Jennifer McNabb4. Flight and Confinement: Female Youth, Agency, and Emotions in Sixteenth-Century New SpainJacqueline Holler 5. Harlots and Camp Followers: Swiss Renaissance Drawings of Young Women circa 1520Christiane AnderssonPart 2 Self-representations: life-writing and letters6. Three Sisters of Carmen: The Youths of Teresa de Jesús, María de San José, and Ana de San BartoloméBarbara Mujica7. Elite English Girlhood in Early Modern Ireland: The Examples of Mary Boyle and Alice WandesfordJulie A. Eckerle 8. Young Women Negotiating Fashion in Early Modern Florence Megan Moran9. 'Is it possible that my sister . . . has had a baby?': The Early Years of Marriage as a Transition from Girlhood to Womanhood in the Letters of Three Generations of Orange-Nassau WomenJane Couchman Part 3 Training for adulthood10. Malleable Youth: Forging Female Education in Early Modern RomeAlessandra Franco 11. The Material Culture of Female Youth in Bologna, 1550-1600Michele Nicole Robinson12. Becoming a Woman in the Dutch Republic: Advice Literature for Young Adult Women of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth CenturiesMarja van TilburgPart 4 Courtship and becoming sexual13. Straying and Led Astray: Roman Maids Become Young Women circa 1600Elizabeth S. Cohen14. A Room of Their Own: Young Women, Courtship, and the Night in Early Modern EnglandEleanor Hubbard15. In Search of a 'remedy': Young Women, Their Intimate Partners, and the Challenge of Fertility in Early Modern France Julie HardwickSupplementary Bibliography of Secondary Works