This chapter argues that an engagement with French literature and culture helped early modern English women from the middle and upper echelons transcend the limitations imposed on their gender, and empowered them as readers, patrons, book owners, and social movers, but also translators and authors. As Tina Krontiris has argued, translation often allowed early modern women an oblique and ‘soft’ point of entry into literature: ‘Englishwomen responded in many ways to the obstacles they encountered . . . Translation became a popular form of literary expression among women of the period, especially in the acceptable subject of religion’.10 But women authors also looked towards French literature as sources of inspiration, not just as new material to be tapped, but because it provided them with powerful philogynist models that valorised female agency. Seventeenth- century French society was traversed by a sweeping movement that saw the emergence of the powerful female salon- holder, arbiter of mores and wit (and sometimes author) in her own right. This woman- friendly context was conducive to the assertion of the published woman author. This chapter touches on the influence on English women of the multifaceted movement subsumed in the concept of préciosité, a cultural phenomenon which created a unique stimulation for seventeenth- century French women by allowing them a voice on the social and the literary stages.