Laura Cereta (1469-1499)

Humanist and feminist, the majority or her writings are correspondences. Young widow, she begins a career as a professor of philosophy at the University of Padua. In 1488, she assembles 82 letters into one work, introduced by a burlesque dialogue about the death of a donkey. This manuscript is distributed under the title “d’Epistolae familiars”. She is criticized for having “presumed that her intellectual abilities were equal to those of men”! Her manuscript will only be publish in the 17^th century.