Discover the lives and works of four ambitious women of the Renaissance, who, despite challenges, managed to be heard and read in the age of Shakespeare. An innovative and accessible narrative of everyday life in Shakespeare's England, where Ramie Targoff takes us from the rich coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century to the private lives of four women writers. Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary, and Anne Clifford wrote at a time when women were legally the property of men, and despite the lack of support for their art, they defined themselves as writers, finding spaces for creation where doors had been closed for centuries. Targoff shows us the treasures these remarkable women left behind, helping us to see the Renaissance in a new light and offering a necessary female perspective on life in the age of Shakespeare.