How Women Wrote the Renaissance
by Ramie Targoff
#ShakespearesSisters #NetGalley
I read Jodi Picoult’s recent release, By Any Other Name, not long ago. This was a fictional, dual time line story about two women playwrights. Picoult posits that of these two main characters, Emilia Bassano, wrote Shakespeare’s plays. She makes a compelling argument.
Anyone who read that novel and was intrigued or anyone who is interested in women’s creative lives during Elizabethan times will want to give this non-fiction title a look. It tells the stories of four women who wrote in an era when most women did not express themselves in this way. The four are Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary and Anne Clifford. The resulting book is quite interesting.
To help readers, the author has included family charts for each of the women. There are also some illustrations interlaced with the text. The reader is given a sense of what life was like in that time period. They will also learn what it was like to manage typical and expected women’s roles while at the same time wanting and having a creative life.
Recommended to those who are interested in history and literature.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for this title. All opinions are my own.
Pub date: 12 March 2024
From the Publisher
Joyce's mystery and fiction book reviews with some non-fiction too! 