“[A] fascinating excavation of four intellectual powerhouse women of the 16th and early 17th centuries . . . Targoff’s intent is to scrape away the layer of literary obscurity from Shakespeare’s sisters and present the pentimento as transcendent survivors. Their work indeed lives on.” —Tina Brown, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
"[An] intimate series of portraits, set against the rich background of Renaissance England . . . Pulsing with juicy biographical details, Shakespeare’s Sisters has its page-turning moments, with more twists than any contemporary television show. Targoff enthusiastically corrects history’s misogyny and casts her subjects in the starring roles that they always deserved." —The American Scholar
“[A] thrilling new group biography . . . Celebrates four very real Renaissance women who made use of their pens . . . With fluid prose, Targoff braids these four biographies to give an outstanding revisionist portrait of an age. She catalogues the difficulties these women faced—from lack of education, to extreme poverty, to obstreperous husbands—but the overall picture is not one, like Woolf imagined, of depression and madness. Targoff’s rewritten Renaissance is one in which women’s lives are not relegated; where their voices are heard
on the page.” —The Telegraph
"In this decidedly feminist take on the literature of the English Renaissance, Targoff profiles four women who wrote during Shakespeare’s lifetime: Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary, and Anne Clifford. 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 . . . The inclusion of historical art and texts gives readers the flavor of the Renaissance." —Library Journal
"Targoff 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. . . . 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." —Publishers Weekly
"Featuring crisp, engaging prose, Targoff’s eye-opening book welcomes general readers." —Kirkus Reviews
"In her new book, Ramie Targoff has done something extraordinary—written a sterling work of feminist history that is never narrowly ideological nor loses sight of the particular lives and language of her heroines. We meet an extraordinary cast of unknown characters, and live more richly in a time we thought we knew." —Adam Gopnik
"Ramie Targoff has written a vivid, finely crafted portrait of four extraordinary Renaissance women whose writing, long buried in archives, defied all the rules. Mary Sidney’s translations, Ameilia Lanyer’s poems, Anne Clifford’s diaries, and Elizabeth Cary’s dramas contained radical messages of autonomy at a time when women had few legal rights and almost no access to education. Raised to keep quiet and obey their husbands, these writers kept diaries, created female heroines, and gave women starring roles on the stage and page. Targoff, an esteemed scholar of Renaissance literature, restores these women to the starring roles they deserve in this fresh, galavanting, and indispensable history of Renaissance England. Shakespeare’s Sisters challenges and expands our historical memory in sweeping, cinematic prose. Scholarly storytelling at its finest." —Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
