ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two collections that contribute to our knowledge of women's literacy as distinguished by both class and genre in early modern Spain. Although women's literacy rates are less familiar to us than mens, many women, whether lay, religious, noble or commoner, had ready access to books or at least to their contents through numerous ways. Educated women also attended literary academies and poetry contests both as active members and as passive participants. The scholar Noelia Garca Prez, whose exhaustive research has brought this remarkable woman to light, rightly states that her collection was the most important of the Spanish Renaissance, and certainly one of the most distinguished of Europe. Menca de Mendoza accumulated vast cultural knowledge through her collections, but she did not, that we know of, participate in the organization and circulation of that knowledge through writing. Her collection of books, therefore, remained an important but only physical part of her legacy.
