This meticulously researched book follows Cox's acclaimed survey, Women's writing in Italy, 1400–1650 (Baltimore 2008), to delve deeper into the years 1580–1630. Women's literary production in Italy in this period was noteworthy in terms of quantity (Cox casts her gaze over a hundred works, listed with brief details in the appendix), quality and ambition, and deserves greater attention from scholars. Separate chapters examine the range that women's writing encompassed: from drama, lyric poetry and discursive prose, to both secular and sacred narratives, and including experiments with genres such as tragedy and epic poetry. On the basis of both published and manuscript sources, Cox develops her earlier argument that the Counter-Reformation did not discourage and inhibit women's writing, building again on research that has stressed the cultural opportunities available to women in this period. Indeed, Cox suggests that the new moralising and pious tone of post-Tridentine Italy, and an interest in vernacular religious literature, actually favoured the aspirations of women in sacred literature, a genre in which they could tap into a powerful tradition of female piety and devotion. Of particular interest is how the experience and traditions of their social milieu shaped some notable clerics – such as Francesco Agostino Della Chiesa (1593–1662) or the Genoese Benedictine Angelo Grillo (1557–1629) – who positively encouraged women's intellectual pursuits. When the debate about what was appropriate for women resurfaced in the early decades of the seventeenth century, clerics such as Grillo wrote in explicit support of women against the ‘rabid dogs’ who criticised them, and women authors likewise adopted a more polemical tone. The prodigious muse provides a welcome addition to Cox's earlier survey book and to publications focused on individual texts or authors (notably the series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe). It incorporates close literary analysis within a framework intent on examining broader themes and contexts, not least the similarities to be seen between sacred and secular literature. Cox opens up several texts that have not been studied extensively and highlights important links with male-authored works. Such a wide-ranging and thoughtful book makes an impressive contribution to what is a lively and developing field, and will surely encourage further research on the complexities of women's writing in these particular decades in Italy and beyond.