Book excerpt: This study sheds light on the development of female authorship in the sixteenth century, through a close analysis of the female patronage and manuscript production leading up to the Renaissance in late medieval France. Under what conditions did women in late medieval France learn to read and write? What models of female erudition and authorship were available to them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries? These questions, often difficult to answer in the extant historical record, are approached here via a number of perspectives, namely, the patronage and book ownership of women between the late medieval and early modern periods, and their involvement in the translation of works from Latin to French.