SHAKESPEARE'S SISTERS

A study of four women pioneers in the age of Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare.

Humanities scholar Targoff, author of Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna, focuses on a “small but not insignificant group of Shakespeare’s contemporaries who did what [Virginia] Woolf deemed impossible: they wrote works of poetry, history, religion and drama.” These four overlooked women “against all odds…found rooms of their own, if only to be buried inside them.” They followed the example of Queen Elizabeth, who loved to write. Jumping back and forth somewhat awkwardly from one woman to another, Targoff provides extensive, insightful historical material along with in-depth biographies, including information about families, money, education, and marriages. Mary Sidney’s brother Philip, the acclaimed poet, went to school, while she was homeschooled. After his early death, Mary “paved her own way,” editing and publishing all of his major works before turning to translations published with her name on the title page—including her “dazzling poetic translation” of the Book of Psalms as well as her own poetry. Aemilia Lanyer’s musician father came to England and became middling gentry thanks to a wealthy countess dowager. Lanyer is famous for writing the first “country house” poem in English. In 1610, she made history as the first woman in the 17th century “to publish a book of original poetry.” Elizabeth Cary, part of the wealthy class, read and knew five languages, and she began her career with translations, later writing the first play by a woman in English, The Tragedy of Mariam, about King Herod’s marriage, and a biography of Edward II. The well-educated Anne Clifford wrote annual chronicles and revealing day diaries, rare for a woman, as well as a memoir titled The Life of Me, in the early 1650s.

Featuring crisp, engaging prose, Targoff’s eye-opening book welcomes general readers.