The emergence of women poets into print publication is one of the most notable watersheds in women’s literary authorship in the early modern period, as a number of first printed editions afford a new visibility for women’s poetry in literary history. Women’s poetry that was printed has taken on critical prominence but it also presents a double bind: it is a cause for celebration, at the same time as an undue emphasis on printing as a mode of publication and circulation can be seen to distort the kinds of authorship, material forms, and literary histories in which women were most active. Over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a number of first printed editions emerged out of vibrant cultures of manuscript circulation, sometimes without the authorization of the woman poet, and often through the agency of male friends and associates. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was embracing print publication with unabashed enthusiasm; the print publication of Katherine Philips’s poetry was generating an ongoing and influential reputation for Philips as a public and literary woman poet; and the relaxation of licensing on printing and the spiritual authority of dissenting religion led to multiple printed volumes of women’s devotional and prophetic poetry. Aphra Behn, in the 1670s and 1680s, was able to earn a living by the pen, even as a profile as a printed poet, dramatist, and prose writer in the commercial literary marketplace continued to carry reputational risk.