"This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Title page verso

Family charts -- Introduction: October 1928: Newnham College and Girton College, Cambridge University (Judith Shakespeare) -- April 28, 1603: Westminster, London (Queen Elizabeth) -- October 27, 1561: Tickenhill Palace, Worcestershire (Mary Sidney) -- April 11, 1576: St. Botolph's Without Bishopsgate, London (Aemilia Lanyer) -- November 17, 1588: Ludgate Hill, London (Mary Sidney) -- Unknown date, 1595: New Woodstock, Oxfordshire (Elizabeth Cary) -- May 17, 1597: Stone House, Billingsgate, London (Aemilia Lanyer) -- June 24, 1603: Dingley Hall, Northamptonshire (Anne Clifford) -- February 2, 1609: Banqueting House, Whitehall Palace (Aemilia Lanyer) -- December 17, 1612: Stationers' Hall, Ave Maria Lane, London (Elizabeth Cary) -- January 5, 1617: Presence Chamber, Whitehall Palace (Anne Clifford) -- May 13, 1619: Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey (Mary Sidney) -- November 11, 1620: Court of Chancery, Westminster Hall (Aemilia Lanyer) -- February 20, 1627: Ten Miles from London (Elizabeth Cary) -- December 11, 1643: Baynard's Castle, London (Anne Clifford) -- Epilogue: May 29, 1989: Linsly-Chittenden Hall, New Haven, Connecticut

"A remarkable work about women writers in the Renaissance explodes our notion of the Shakespearean period and brings us in close to four women who were committed to their craft before there was any possibility of "a room of one's own." In a sparkling and engaging narrative of everyday life in Shakespearean England, Ramie Targoff carries us from the sumptuous coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-sixteenth century into the private lives of four women writers working without acknowledgment at a time when women were legally the property of men. Some readers may have heard of Mary Sidney, accomplished poet and sister of the famous Sir Philip Sidney, but few will have heard of Amelia Lanyer, the first woman to publish a book of poetry in the 17th century, which offered a feminist take on the crucifixion, or Elizabeth Cary, who published the first original play by a woman, about the plight of the Jewish princess Mariam. Then there was Anne Clifford, a lifelong diarist, who fought for decades against a patriarchy that tried to rob her of her land, in one of England's most infamous inheritance battles. These women had husbands and children to care for and little support for their art, yet against all odds they defined themselves as writers, finding rooms of their own whose doors had been shut for centuries. Targoff flings them open to uncover the treasures left by these extraordinary women by helping us see the period in a fresh light and by supplying an expanded reading of history and a much-needed female perspective on life in Shakespeare's day"--