This book offers a historical analysis of the role played by translation in that complex redefinition of women's writing that was taking place in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century. It investigates the ways in which women writers managed to appropriate images of Italy and adapt them to their own purposes. In a period in which female literary productions were relegated to the margins of the British cultural system, women made use of foreign models in order to back up their claims to a new cultural authority. A brief survey of translations produced by women in the period 1730-1799 provides an overview of the genres favoured by women translators, such as the moral novel, sentimental play and a type of conduct literature of a distinctively 'proto-feminist' character. Elizabeth Carter's translation of Francesco Algarotti's Il Newtonianesimo per le Dame (1739) is one of the best examples of the latter kind of texts.