Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance by Ramie Targoff tells the stories of Mary Sidney, Amelia Lanyer, Anne Clifford and Elizabeth Cary who were writers of poetry and plays. A nonfiction in depth telling of each lady and her life. On occasion, the details given were too much and bogged down the stories. It was good to hear their stories because women authors did not happen in Renaissance England. Thank you to NetGallery and Knopf for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Chronology of the female writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book shows the hardships that female writers endured. Some had to put their work in a male relative's name in order to be published.

A thrilling look at the women of Shakespeare's era. I found the Elizabeth chapter most useful and used it with my students for our fall play which featured on Queen Elizabeth. This is a must read for any Tudor or Shakespeare fan. Highly recommended.

It seems as though a gazillion books (give or take a few) have been written about Elizabethan England, but this one intrigued me because it explored a subject new to me, female writers. Author Ramie Targoff says in her Epilogue that she went all through her studies in English literature, including a PhD, without reading any literature by women written during the time of Shakespeare. Because of this, her book is important as a work of research as well as very entertaining reading. Targoff sets the scene with Queen Elizabeth I, reminding readers of the broad points of her life, but then concentrates the rest of the book by focusing on four extraordinary women: poet Mary Sydney; Aemelia Lanyer, whose book of poetry offers a distinctly (and surprising) feminist viewpoint; Elizabeth Cary, the first published female playwright in England, and Anne Clifford, a diarist whose work helped save her own inheritance and chronicle the lives of her family. Although most of the narrative is about the work of these writers, there are several quotes from each one to give us a sense of what wonderful artists they were.

Targoff's style is very readable, but like most books about English history, the relationships and lineages are often difficult to follow. I've read several books about this time period, but these women all came from a slightly lower tier of nobility than others I've read. Some of the women's relationships intersect, others do not. It didn't help that Targoff chose to alternate chapters between the four women rather than telling the complete story of one and then moving on to the next. I can understand the choice, but for me, the complete stories would have worked better.

Extensive notes and bibliography are included, making this book an excellent choice for college level English classes, but is accessible and entertaining for the lay person as well.

Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this advance reader copy.

Very informative story of women writers who were ( roughly) Shakespeare contemporaries during a time when women were discouraged from writing, much less publishing. The author explores the backgrounds and writings of 4 specific women and while it sometimes veers off into some quite academic details, mostly a good read for those who are not familiar with this period of women’s literary history

Shakespeare's Sisters is an incredibly passionate and empathetic biography of four English women authors, Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary, and Anne Clifford. Even though all these women overlap chronologically, they could not be more different in their chosen medium, personal lives, or temperaments. While there are several amazing women authors from the period that Targoff did not touch on, her choices of who to include demonstrate the sheer breadth of content in this field. We start with Sidney's massive collection of Biblical poetry but ultimately end up with Clifford's relentless and calculating legal campaign, with a quick detour into the absolute insanity that is Elizabeth Cary's one-woman campaign to revive Catholicism. There is plenty to enjoy in this book even if you aren't looking for very technical literary analysis of their works.

I really liked the chronological layout of this book, since it emphasized how interconnected these women were, as well as how much they reflect this period in English history. It did make it confusing, however, when we don't see Sidney and Lanyer for large periods of time. Overall, I would recommend to anyone interested in women authors, Renaissance literature, or even those just craving some juicy Early Modern gossip.

Readers are warned that this is not a book of literary criticism about the works of Renaissance writers, rather it is about the lives of four writers that led relatively well-documented lives. And author Ramie Targoff intends to show us not that these women were exceptional, but to describe their everyday lives, lives that would have been familiar to many women in Elizabethan and Jacobean Britain.

Even forewarned, I was a bit disappointed not to learn more about the works of the women (Anne Clifford, Mary Sidney, Elizabeth Cary, and Aemilia Lanier. Fortunately, there are plenty of resources cited throughout and in the bibliography.

By looking at four women of roughly the same generation, Targoff shows that women writers were not as rare in Shakespeare's day as we might have assumed, and that their lives can be seen as unexceptional, and therefore it's possible, even likely, that more women might be discovered to have been writers.

(Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital review copy.)

This was a enjoyable topic and I enjoyed getting into Shakespeare’s world, I never really thought about what it was like for women of the time. Ramie Targoff does a great job in writing this and felt like it was researched well. I enjoyed the history element and getting to read this.

Courtesy of Knopf Publishers and Netgalley, I received the ARC of Shakespeare's Sisters by Rami Targoff. This well researched work on women writers in Renaissance England provided a fascinating look into the era of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare. The four women highlighted were poets, playwrights, and diarists, in addition to being wives and mothers. This book emphasizes their persistence, fearlessness, intellectual abilities, and religiosity. They defied the current standards and did not write for glory or acclaim...truly feminists!

A solid examination of the lives and careers of several women writers who were contemporaneous with Shakespeare. It would have been nice if these women didn't have to be attached to Shakespeare in any way to get attention, but this is a book for general readers, and I suppose the title has to pander a bit. Readers to new to Mary Sidney, Elizabeth Cary, Anne Clifford, and Aemilia Lanyer will find a firm foundation in this book. I will warn about casual fatphobia and the author's tendency to wallow in the more morbid--and, in relation to her topic, bizarrely emphasized--details of death and funeral rites.

When I saw this title and synopsis, I immediately wanted to read it. I am not normally drawn in by nonfiction, but I love historical feminism and reading historical diaries!

This was a captivating, detailed account of the lives of women writers during the Renaissance and the barriers they faced, even when equipped with wealth and privilege.

I knew of Mary Sidney, but had not heard of the other writers discussed in this book. I found myself deeply inspired by Anne Clifford's dedication to her legacy and getting what was rightfully hers, Mary Sidney's beautiful and invoking psalm translations, Aemilia Lanier's feminist-focused Biblical stories and advocacy for female equality, and Elizabeth Cary's female-led plays!

Did you know Aemilia was the fourth ever published woman writer in England? And that she has been falsely attributed as Shakespeare's lover for hundreds of years?

While dense at times, this is a beautiful read and well-worth your time! There are so many interesting tidbits on culture and traditions; it's absolutely chocked full!

There was no sancitity for women during the Renaissance, even in death and no identity even with status, but still, somehow pen and paper can last lifetimes.

Thank you for NetGalley for a free copy of this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Shakespeare's Sisters by Ramie Targoff is an eye-opening introduction to Renaissance life throught the eyes of intelligent women who lived then. Targoff tells us that probably less than 10% of English women were educated. Each of the women studied learned most of what they knew on their own. They struggled with capricious laws designed to keep them financially dependent on husbands who were much less intelligent than they were. Their writing was often credited to the men in their lives. Most of the women experienced periods of comfortable wealth as well as grinding poverty. Targoff does an excellent job of introducing readers to probabilities where there is no evidence or record to explain events in the women's lives. This is a very readable scholarly work that will entertain and appall.

Thank you for providing an advanced copy of this title.

I think this book will be a great addition to our library--primarily, because academia is currently turning toward a trend where more "average lives" are explored rather than major players (like Shakespeare). This book paints a great portrait of four women who existed alongside Shakespeare and published in their own right. Although the women are upper-class and do not totally fit the narrative for an "average life," I think this title will really appeal to students wanting to explore a broader understanding of Renaissance history and women.

Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance by Ramie Targoff is a great nonfiction that highlights a few of the talented female authors in the 17th century England.

This is such a wonderful collection of female authors, some more well-known than others, that lived during the Renaissance era in England.

It was fascinating to learn more about these talented women, as well as more about British society and history, through their lives and experiences.

There are so many authors, especially those of women, that are pushed off to the side and are forgotten. They deserve a chance in the spotlight, and it is clear from the extensive research, that this author has succeeded in that endeavor.

5/5 stars

Thank you NG and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 3/12/24.

I've read a lot about the history of England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and this book was full of new information about one woman I'd heard of and three I had not. I knew who Mary Sidney was, and that generally she was a writer like her brother had been, but that was about it. In addition to filling out the picture of her life and what writing she did, Targoff introduces the reader to three other women you're not likely to have encountered before. In each case, writing was just part of an extremely eventful life in Tudor and Stuart England, and each woman was an active and vital personality.

You won't come away from this book with much idea of what these women's writing was like, but that was not Targoff's purpose. In her epilogue she lets you know what has been published and when, so you can go read more if you want. I guess I should not be surprised that their work was not even known, let alone published, until extremely recently.

The book is very well written, and when I read the acknowledgements and saw that I know the copyeditor, I could see why! I did spot one factual error that might have been corrected in a final careful read: at one point, discussing an event in 1599, Elizabeth is referred to as "the 62 year old queen" but having been born in September 1533 she was 65 or maybe 66.

While perhaps there was a little more extended description of funeral processions of royalty than I needed, the book was also a smooth and quick read. It's hard to know given the overall context of their lives how much each of these women was committed to her craft, but clearly they were proud of and dedicated to the quality of what they did write. Mary Sidney's psalm translations and Elizabeth Cary's dramas sound the most interesting. Aemilia Lanyer's poetry has been misunderstood and mistreated for years because of a couple of outdated and poorly supported assertions that she might have been Shakespeare's 'dark lady' (assuming he even had one). And Anne Clifford was just formidable, no other word for her. I'd like to read more books like this one, please!

A beautiful masterpieces honoring women of the Renaissance time and their contribution to literature. A moment for four women to shine in their art and work in a time where this was not accepted. A female perspective on a historical time.