![Rebekah-Fisher-inscription-aspect-ratio-689-525](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2024/03/Rebekah-Fisher-inscription-aspect-ratio-689-525.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
What were women reading? A dive into the Folger vault
Peer with me into the books left behind by women readers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. What kind of books were they reading? What sort of notes did they write in them? What can we learn about their…
![024619 Nell Gwyn. Print, by R. Tomson after Peter Lely, from Cunningham, The story of Nell Gwyn. 1883. Folger Shakespeare Library.](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2019/01/024619.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
The First English Actresses
In 1660, women (rather than men) began playing female roles, including female Shakespearean roles, on the professional English stage. Learn more about these early actresses.
![Public domain image of Lady Mary Wroth Public domain image of Lady Mary Wroth](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2017/03/Lady_Mary_Wroth.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
Lady Mary Wroth and 'The Countess of Montgomery's Urania'
Lady Mary Wroth watched Shakespeare act in his own plays, heard her relative Sir Walter Raleigh talk about founding Virginia, and almost certainly met Pocahantas and ambassadors from Morocco. Wroth’s later prose fiction echoes elements of her own life, including…
![Early modern women reading Early modern women reading](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2016/11/Women-Reading.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
Studying early modern women—in Shakespeare's plays and in his time
By Esther Ferington The roles of early modern women in Shakespeare’s time—both the fictional characters in his plays and the real-life women of his era—have been central to many projects created by Georgianna Ziegler, Louis B. Thalheimer Associate Librarian and…