Shakespeare's Sisters: Series Kickoff
In her seminal lecture 'Room with a View,' Virginia Woolf encourages us to imagine the biography of Judith Shakespeare. Judith is the talented twin of her better-known brother William. She possesses his talents, his energy, his dedication to his field, but alas she is a woman and therefore has no space and no time, to hone her craft. Virginia Woolf comes to the conclusion that for Judith Shakespeare to be successful, she would have needed to have a room of her own.
Professor Ramie Targoff's new book Shakespeare's Sisters examines the scope of this claim, by recovering from the archive, the writings of four Elizabethan women: Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary, and Anne Clifford. Mary Sidney, like Judith Shakespeare, is the sister of her better-known brother Sir Philip Sidney. Anne Clifford, the wife of Mary's stepson was a wealthy landowner and lifelong diarist. Aemelia Lanyer was the governess of Anne Clifford, and Elizabeth Cary was similarly