The discovery and publication of Spanish women writers of the Golden Age has increased dramatically in the past twenty years. This was and continues to be the first step in the recovery of the female literary voice. With regard to narrative, after centuries of neglect, the novelas of María de Zayas y Sotomayor have commanded the majority of editorial attention. The comedias of female playwrights also have been edited and published, with Ana Caro de Mallén and—again—María de Zayas commanding center stage. The second most prolific literary activity of the period—but scarcely published—was poetry, the most representative of which has been collected recently in two anthologies, with Leonor de la Cueva y Silva, Catalina Clara Ramírez de Guzmán, and Sor Violante del Cielo most prominent in the area of secular poetry; and Sor Violante, Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, Cecilia del Nacimiento, and Sor Marcela de San Félix outstanding in the area of sacred verse. The most prolific area of female writing, and the most published from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, were the autobiographical and spiritual narratives of female religious, the former categorized as vidas. With the exception of the Libro de la vida of St. Teresa of Ávila—and her other prose works—this is the area that most needs editorial attention.

The second step is the study of the literary production of these remarkable women. The novelas of María de Zayas have been the subject of books by Margaret Rich Greer, Marina Brownlee, and Lisa Vollendorf, and a collection of essays edited by Amy Williamsen and Judith Whitenack. Various articles have also been dedicated to her works, the most recent of which are collected in Judith Whitenack and Gwyn E. Campbell's Zayas and Her Sisters, 2, which also includes studies of the novelas of Leonor de Meneses and Mariana de Carvajal, and which is the companion book to the anthology of novelas, Zayas and Her Sisters, 1. With the exception of Zayas and Caro, other female comediantes have been less felicitous with regard to drawing critical attention, but the studies of Teresa Scott Soufas, and Valerie Hegstrom and Amy R. Williamsen are encouraging in this regard. For autobiographies and spiritual narratives, we are indebted to the pioneering studies of Ronald Surtz, Richard L. Kagan, Sherry Velasco, Elizabeth Rhodes, Mary Giles, and especially Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, and others; but modern editions are lacking.

The area less studied continues to be poetry. This edition of: Studies on Women Poets of the Golden Age: Tras el espejo la musa escribe—the companion volume to the revised anthology of Tras el espejo la musa escribe: Lírica femenina de los Siglos de Oro (2009, 1st ed., 1993)—endeavors to begin addressing this critical need. Thirteen highly-regarded critics have contributed studies which will assist the student and scholar to appreciate and study the obstacles, multiple voicings, lyrical performances, and discourse strategies of twelve female poets of the Spanish sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The studies are grouped in two categories: secular and religious. The following is an overview of these studies.