SHAKESPEARE'S SISTERS How Women Wrote the Renaissance

Literature specialists may be familiar with the four writers featured in this group biography--Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary, and Anne Clifford--but most listeners will not be. This is in part because their work was generally ignored or suppressed. Ramie Targoff is interested in why that happened, considering that three of the women were countesses, well established in the English ruling class. The story is fascinating as it shifts from one writer to another and explores connections between them, but it would have benefited from a more expressive reading, one that is more sensitive to the emotional range of the text. Hannah Curtis is also susceptible to odd phrasing, which sometimes obscures the author's meaning. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2024]