Based on a survey of nearly seven hundred works with female authors from this period, this book contends that authorship was constructed, not always by the author, for market appeal, that biography often supported an authorial persona rooted in the genre of the work, and that authorship was a role rather than an identity. From 1670 to 1750, nearly 700 works are now identified as written by women, and though this is less than one per cent of the total print output, Orr's exploration and command of this corpus will help to inform research on women's writing in this period for years to come.