Shakespeare's Sisters

October 1, 2023

Mary Sidney, an accomplished poet and the sister of the celebrated Sir Philip Sidney. Amelia Lanyer, the first professional woman poet in England. Elizabeth Cary, the first professional woman playwright. And diarist Anne Clifford, who fought a long inheritance battle to keep her lands. Brandeis humanities professor Targoff (Renaissance Woman) celebrate four women who became writers in 1600s England despite the odds. Prepub Alert.

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December 1, 2023

In this decidedly feminist take on the literature of the English Renaissance, Targoff (English, Brandeis Univ.; Renaissance Women) profiles four women who wrote during Shakespeare's lifetime: Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary, and Anne Clifford. Lanyer may be the most interesting, as she was not a member of the aristocracy and was married to an immigrant. She wrote the first published work of poetry by a woman in England; it was about the Passion of the Christ from a completely female perspective, and she successfully gained patronage because of it. Cary wrote the first play published by a woman, about the Jewish princess Mariam. Clifford was a dedicated diarist who fought against the patriarchy to keep her family's estate in her name. Sidney wrote poetry and translations of the Psalms. Targoff colorfully captures these women who followed their passion for writing at a time when women were considered property and did not always receive any formal education. VERDICT This is a very readable but scholarly work on a little-known part of literary history. The inclusion of historical art and texts gives readers the flavor of the Renaissance. Recommended for larger public libraries and audiences who enjoy literary history.--Kristen Stewart

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January 1, 2024
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.

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January 15, 2024
Historian Targoff (Renaissance Woman) delivers a vibrant group portrait of four women writers in Elizabethan England, most of whom were ignored or obscured for centuries but were “resurrected” by feminist scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries. She begins with countess Mary Sidney, who not long after compiling a posthumous volume of her famous brother Philip’s work became a literary figure in her own right. A gifted translator, she began publishing her translations of French plays and poems in 1592 under her real name, an “unprecedented” move for a noblewoman. This allowed her work to be recognized after her lifetime, unlike fellow noblewoman Elizabeth Cary, whose authorship of the anonymous Tragedy of Marriam—a play about an ancient Jewish princess murdered by her husband—only came to light in France circa 1850 with the discovery of a biography written by her daughters. Rounding out the quartet are Aemilia Lanyer (born to a family of “middling gentry”), whose 1611 epic poem Salve Deus, a feminist retelling of Eve’s fall and the crucifixion, wasn’t reissued for another 360 years; and aristocrat Anne Clifford, whose diary (spanning from 1603 to 1676) was first published in 1923 by her descendant Vita Sackville-West. Targoff’s narrative is full of vivid personalities and intriguing tales of court alliances and rivalries. It’s an enlightening study of the era’s literary scene and the women who persevered despite their exclusion from it.

February 9, 2024
Shakespeare is a worldwide icon, but in Shakespeare's Sisters, Targoff, a professor of English, writes about the private lives of four relatively unknown women in the mid-sixteenth century who wrote at the same time as Shakespeare: the poets Mary Sidney and Aemilia Lanyer as well as writers Anne Clifford and Elizabeth Cary. There's no shortage of texts about Shakespeare's male contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, yet women have been left out of these conversations for the most part. Targoff interweaves an extensive background of what life was like in Elizabethan England while exploring the lives of these women, covering history, literary criticism of their writing, and religion. While intended for both scholarly and general readers, Shakespeare's Sisters is more academic in tone and can be overwhelming for those who don't already know much about the era. For those who have long wondered why more books do not explore the lives of Shakespeare's female contemporaries, Targoff's text is a comprehensive introduction.

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