Sonnets and the English Woman Writer, 1560-1621 examines why women in the English Renaissance wrote so few sonnet sequences, in comparison with the traditions of Continental women writers and of English male authors. It attributes the absence in part to the widespread circulation of the scandalous casket sonnets attributed to Mary Queen of Scots, and examines the ways in which women in England practised the genre before the publication of the casket sonnets and in its wake, In a set of detailed historical analyses of female authorship and female writing within this single genre, this study examines the complex intersection of gender and genre in the period, and exposes some of the methodological problems currently underpinning our understanding of the practises and boundaries of early modern women's writing.