This bilingual collection of Francesca Turini Bufalini's (1553–1641) autobiographical poetry is a welcome contribution to the rich landscape of scholarship on female poets in the Italian tradition. The book under review assembles one portion of Turini Bufalini's extensive oeuvre, the 141 poems that may be classified as autobiographical, and presents them in the original Italian with facing English translations. In the critical introduction Costa-Zalessow explains her aim to “point out the parallelism between events in her [Turini Bufalini's] actual life and her poetic compositions” (8). She delineates this alignment by presenting a well-researched biography of Turini Bufalini alongside continuous references to the poems contained in the volume. Thus the reader can move with ease from the historical events laid out in the introduction to Turini Bufalini's personal poetic expression of these very moments, and thereby access an invaluable personal perspective on the poet's life seldom revealed in the writings of other women at the time.

The historical context outlined in the introduction is further illuminated with photos of the Bufalini family properties and the inclusion of bibliographies of both primary and secondary sources, though the omission of an index may limit the book's potential use as an instrument for research. The selection of autobiographical poems that constitute the book are drawn from Turini Bufalini's two published collections of poetry, and they are arranged to chronicle the poet's life in four parts: “From Childhood to Marriage,” “Marriage and Motherhood,” “Death of Her Husband,” and “A Long Widowhood: Laments, Difficulties, Children and Grandchildren, Remembrances and Old Age.” The first source is Turini Bufalini's spiritual work entitled Rime spirituali sopra i Misteri del Santissimo Rosario (Spiritual Verses on the Mysteries of the Holy Rosary), printed in Rome in 1595. While composed primarily of religious poetry inspired by the New Testament, the sixth and final section consists of poems on Turini Bufalini's widowhood. The second source is a section from Turini Bufalini's collected Rime, first printed in Città di Castello in 1627, and subsequently edited, expanded, and reprinted in 1628. In both editions, Turini Bufalini included a series of sonnets under the subtitle “Principio dello stato dell'autrice” (Beginning of the Author's Life), leaving no doubt that these poems are to be read as autobiographical. The use of both the 1595 and 1627–28 publications allows Costa-Zalessow to construct a comprehensive narrative of the author's life in her own words, but the interwoven presentation of the sources in the introduction and the alteration between the two works in the layout of the poems left this reader occasionally disoriented. The reading of Turini Bufalini's autobiographical poems in the introduction stresses her personal tone of expression, even confession, and Borelli's translations fittingly capture the poet's “intimacy and immediacy of voice” in English (53). Borelli's work successfully navigates the difficult task of transmitting a poet's singular sound — especially crucial when the self serves as subject — as it communicates through an imitative art form. The translations pay due attention to the musicality and rhythmic quality of the poetic form, while they powerfully showcase the unique intent of the original Italian: the expression of Turini Bufalini's authorial “I.”

Costa-Zalessow argues for the originality and novelty of Turini Bufalini's personal poetic expression, and she reviews and comments on the tradition of literary criticism surrounding the poet's work. Here she convincingly sets the critical record straight: while some critics have read the poet as a sixteenth-century Petrarchista, Costa-Zalessow persuasively argues for Turini Bufalini's proper standing as a seventeenth-century lyricist whose style gestures at a departure from the Petrarchan model and is more reflective of influences from the emerging Baroque period. Thus the novelty of Turini Bufalini's poetic voice is twofold: the personal poetic descriptions of her life from childhood to old age shed new light on the feminine experience of the early modern period, while the unique style of articulation, in moving away from a Petrarchan embedding, marks the beginning of a Baroque women's tradition worthy of further critical study. Borelli's translations will expand readership access to this notable female poet, and Costa-Zalessow's scholarship will benefit scholars interested in the development of the female lyric tradition.