Rachel Speght, pamphleteer and poet, was an important voice in the gender polemics of the early seventeenth century. She was the first of many authors to respond in print to Joseph Swetnam's Arraignment of Lewd, idle, froward and unconstant women (1615). Her 1617 response, A Mouzell for Melastomus, is one of the first semireligious texts published by a woman in English. In addition, hers was the only female response that included her real name on the title page; all other pamphlets written by women in the Swetnam controversy were published pseudonymously. Four years later, in 1621, Speght published a long dream vision in verse, Mortalities Memorandum . The poem, also published under her own name, was her last publication.

Born in 1597 in London, Rachel was the daughter of James Speght. Her father (son of John Speght of Horbury, Yorkshire) graduated doctor of divinity from Christ's College, Cambridge, and was ordained in May...