Annotation: Natalie Zemon Davis’s famous book Women on the Margins (first published 1997) brings three 17th-century European women to the fore—each with very different intellectual and life experiences, but similar in their originality, determination, and independence. Neither the Jewish Glikl bas Judah Leib, the Catholic Marie de l’Incarnation, nor the Protestant Maria Sibylla Merian were royalty or nobility. Rather, they lived “on the margins” of the European 17th century. Yet, as Davis argues, their diaries, letters and travel notes give us a much more accurate idea of early modern times than official court history. The author carefully reconstructs the life and creative strategies of these women. How, due to different cultural traditions, did each look for her own response to the challenges of the time (marriage, motherhood, religion, the status of women in society)? This triptych monograph describes the full range of opportunities for female self-realization in the 17th century, which could only be achieved far from the centers of power, on the periphery of the European ecumene.