Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz 1648 – 1695

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was a Mexican Hieronymite nun and the foremost writer of the Spanish Baroque. Self-taught and celebrated as a child prodigy, she chose the convent over marriage in order to pursue learning. Her cell at the Convent of San Jeronimo housed one of the largest libraries in the New World, and from it issued an extraordinary body of poetry, plays, and prose. Her Reply to Sor Filotea is a powerful defense of women's right to study and write, and her satirical poem Hombres Necios anticipates many themes of modern feminist criticism. She died nursing her sisters during a plague.