Christine de Pizan

Christine de Pizan was born in Venice and raised at the French court, where her father was astrologer to Charles V; widowed at twenty-five with three children, she supported them by writing, the first woman in Europe to make a living by her pen. The Book of the City of Ladies of 1405 builds, with Reason, Rectitude and Justice as guides, a city of the virtuous and learned women of history against the misogyny of the clerks, and answers the Romance of the Rose directly. She wrote poetry, a life of Charles V and a manual of warfare, and her last work praised Joan of Arc.