This remarkable work about Women writers in the English Renaissance explodes our notion of the Shakespearean period by drawing us into the lives of four Women who were committed to their craft long before there was any possibility of a room of one\'s own.
Targoff flings those doors open, revealing the treasures left by these extraordinary women; in the process, she helps us see the Renaissance in a fresh light, creating a richer understanding of history and offering a much-needed female perspective on life in Shakespeare\'s day..
These Women had husbands and children to care for and little support for their art, yet against all odds they defined themselves as writers, finding rooms of their own where doors had been shut for centuries.
Then there was Anne Clifford, a lifelong diarist who fought for decades against a patriarchy that tried to rob her of her land in one of England\'s most infamous inheritance battles.
Some readers may have heard of Mary Sidney, accomplished poet and sister of the famous Sir Philip Sidney, but few will have heard of Aemilia Lanyer, the first woman in the seventeenth century to publish a book of original poetry, which offered a feminist take on the crucifixion, or Elizabeth Cary, who published the first original play by a woman, about the plight of the Jewish princess Mariam.
In an innovative and engaging narrative of everyday life in Shakespeare\'s England, Ramie Targoff carries us from the sumptuous coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-sixteenth century into the private lives of four Women writers working at a time when Women were legally the property of men.
This remarkable work about Women writers in the English Renaissance explodes our notion of the Shakespearean period by drawing us into the lives of four Women who were committed to their craft long before there was any possibility of a room of one\'s own
