The first Jewish woman to leave her mark as a writer and intellectual, Sarra Copia Sulam (1600?-41) was doubly tainted in the eyes of early modern society by her religion and her gender. This remarkable woman, who until now has been relatively neglected by modern scholarship, was a unique figure in Italian cultural life, opening her home, in the Venetian ghetto, to Jews and Christians alike as a literary salon.

For this bilingual edition, Don Harran has collected all of Sulam's previously scattered writings-letters, sonnets, a "Manifesto"-into a single volume. Harran has also assembled...