Dr. Catherine Martin received her Ph.D at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Martin’s chief interests lie in sixteenth and seventeenth century literature and philosophy, specializing particularly in the lyric, religious, and epic poetry of the period. Her first book on Paradise Lost won the Milton Society of America’s James Holly Hanford Award, its highest honor. Her recent work on the latter two centers particularly on their French and Italian influences and connections. She has also published on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, although more extensively on John Donne and Francis Bacon. Forthcoming works will continue to revisit Bacon’s legacy in both science (in this period better understood as empirical method in various arts) and in early science fiction. Last but hardly least, Dr. Martin teaches the writings of the first feminists who appeared in the seventeenth century and has edited an important essay collection entitled Milton and Gender (Cambridge, 2004)