Anna Maria van Schurman was widely regarded as the most erudite woman in seventeenth-century Europe. As “the Star of Utrecht,” she was active in a network of learning that included the most renowned scholars of her time. Known for her extensive learning and her defense of the education of women, she was the first woman to sit in on lectures at a university in the Netherlands and to advocate that women be admitted into universities. She was proficient in fourteen languages, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Aramaic, Persian, Samaritan, and Ethiopian, as well as several vernacular European languages. This volume presents in translation a remarkable collection of her letters and poems—many of which were previously unpublished—that span almost four decades of her life, from 1631 to 1669.   “This volume of letters and poems, which comes at a propitious time in Anna Maria van Schurman scholarship, is far more inclusive than anything I have seen, and will interest a potentially large audience of knowledgeable readers. The letters included here, in superior translations, display the art of letter writing in all its facets and possibilities, trace the continued exchange of ideas with members of van Schurman’s circle, and exemplify the scholarly debates of the seventeenth century, with a woman as one of the debaters.” -- Cornelia Niekus Moore, University of Hawaii Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–78) was a Dutch poet, artist, and scholar. Anne R. Larsen is professor emerita and senior research professor at Hope College. She is author of Anna Maria van Schurman, “The Star of Utrecht”: The Educational Vision and Reception of a Savante and coeditor of Anna Maria van Schurman, Letters and Poems to and from Her Mentor and Other Members of Her Circle . Steve Maiullo is associate professor of classics at Hope College and has publishedarticles on Plato and the teaching of Latin and Greek.