Aemilia Lanyer was a middle-class Londoner of Jewish-Italian descent and the mistress of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Chamberlain. But she is remembered today as the first Englishwoman to publish a substantial volume of original poems (1611). Her output is varied, subtle, provocative, and witty. The essays in this volume establish the intrinsic merit of Lanyer's poetry and use her work to interrogate that of her male contemporaries, Donne, Jonson, and Shakespeare. As a whole the collection offers a sustained discussion of the processes of canonization and the construction of literary history. For this first booklength study of Lanyer's work, Marshall Grossman has assembled a stellar group of Renaissance scholars, including Boyd Berry, David Bevington, Leeds Barroll, Achsah Guibbory, Michael Morgan Holmes, Barbara K. Lewalski, Kari Boyd McBride, Naomi I. Miller, Janel Mueller, Karen Nelson, and Susanne Woods.