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Early modern women

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What were women reading? A dive into the Folger vault
Shakespeare and Beyond

What were women reading? A dive into the Folger vault

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Author
Georgianna Ziegler

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…

The First English Actresses
Nell Gwyn. Print, by R. Tomson after Peter Lely, from Cunningham, The story of Nell Gwyn. 1883. Folger Shakespeare Library.
Shakespeare and Beyond

The First English Actresses

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Georgianna Ziegler

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.

Lady Mary Wroth and 'The Countess of Montgomery's Urania'
Public domain image of Lady Mary Wroth
Shakespeare and Beyond

Lady Mary Wroth and 'The Countess of Montgomery's Urania'

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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

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…

Studying early modern women—in Shakespeare's plays and in his time
Early modern women reading
Shakespeare and Beyond

Studying early modern women—in Shakespeare's plays and in his time

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Author
Esther Ferington

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…