Challenges the notion of how early modern women may or may not have spoken for (or even with) nature. By focusing on various forms of 'dialogue,' these essays shift our interest away from speaking and toward listening, to illuminate ways that early modern Englishwomen interacted with their natural surroundings.

Foreword; M.O'Connor  & S.Mendelson   Introduction; J.Munroe & R.Laroche   PART I: RETHINKING THE FAMILIAR: THE WOMAN-NATURE CONNECTION Nature and the Difference 'She' Makes; L.Bruckner  First 'Mother of Science': Milton's Eve, Knowledge, and Nature; J.Munroe   Ecofeminist Eve: Illustrators Reading Milton's Heroine; W.Furman-Adams   PART II: RETHINKING THE 'ECOFEMINIST' IN EARLY MODERN DOMESTIC PRACTICE On the 'Oil of Swallows': Early Modern Women's Material Practice of Medicine and the Reliability of the Textual Record; M.DiMeo  & R.Laroche   Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Hannah Woolley's Material Politics; D.Goldstein  Preserving Nature: in Hannah Woolley's The Queen-Like Closet; or Rich Cabinet ; A.Tigner  PART III: RE-THINKING/RE-READING THE LANDSCAPE 'Goeing a broad to gather and worke the flowers': The Domestic Geography of Elizabeth Isham's Book of Remembrance ; H.Nunn  Grafting and Graffiti in Wroth's Urania ; M.Jacobson  & V.Nardizzi  Language 'like a thousand little stars on the trees and on the grass': Environmental inscription in Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague ;  E.Bowles   Afterword; R.Bushnell

JENNIFER MUNROE Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA.
REBECCA LAROCHE Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, USA.