In the Mexico City of the late seventeenth century, at the furthest reaches of the Spanish Empire, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora kept an intellectual company of poets, natural philosophers, and theologians. From within her convent library, Sor Juana wrote poems, plays, philosophical treatises, and a defense of a woman’s right to learning that would take centuries to be fully received.