Rachel Speght (1597-?) was the first Englishwoman to identify herself as a polemicist and critic of contemporary gender ideology. This study discusses both her tract, "A Mouzell for Melastomus" (1617) and her volume of poetry, "Mortalities Memorandum, with a Dreame Prefixed" (1612).

Rachel Speght was the first Englishwoman to identify herself, unmistakably and by name, as a polemicist and critic of contemporary gender ideology. This edition includes her foray into the Jacobean gender wars and her collected poems.

Renaissance scholars and their students will welcome Barbara Lewalski's lucid introduction to Speght's works....Readers of Lewalski's earlier work will find the compressed rhetoric of the introduction compelling, appreciating the first appearance of this meticulously edited text. Her methodology is eclectic, drawing on formalist, generic, historical, and deconstructive terminology in the introductory material.