ABSTRACT
The publications of Isabella Andreini are beginning to receive scholarly attention. Her pastoral play Mirtilla of 1588 has appeared in a modern edition and been translated into English. There is evidence from November 1601 that Isabella Andreini was working on some material in epistolary form, which her correspondent the Belgian humanist Erycius Puteanus then urged her to publish. Whether this was the same material which appears in her printed Lettere we cannot tell. In 1616, Isabella's Lettere were reprinted with more material attached to them. The Lettere themselves are printed as one hundred and fifty-one items, of which one hundred and fifty have titles, sometimes very approximate ones. Central to Isabella's whole approach to writing was the act of impersonation. Isabella's collection of Lettere belongs to an established genre of writings in epistolary form published by theatre practitioners, and this fact too needs to be taken into account in any larger or more detailed study.
