Women's history

Flowers, bugs, birds, frogs—all and more are found in the manuscripts of Esther Inglis (1570?–1624) now on display in Little Books, Big Gifts, a special Folger exhibition highlighting her artistry with pen and brush.

Acclaimed Shakespearean actor Harriet Walter reimagines what the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet might have said after Juliet’s death in an excerpt from She Speaks!.

Enjoy a video from the Esther Inglis special exhibition, showing how early modrern calligrapher, artist, and writer Inglis’s self-portraits helped tell her story.

Discover how our perceptions of Juliet have evolved over centuries, as Sophie Duncan explores the lasting legacy of Shakespeare’s first tragic heroine.

On display: A letter from Abigail Adams and other extraordinary American items help celebrate the Fourth of July.

Ramie Targoff explores the lives and works of Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer, Anne Clifford, and Elizabeth Cary in her new book, Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance.

English women didn’t act on London’s professional stages until the 1660s. But Pamela Allen Brown argues that despite this, star actresses from Italy altered both plays and playing in a process that began in the 1570s, when commedia dell’arte troupes first set foot in London.

Over the centuries there have been hundreds of editions of Shakespeare’s plays: Small, inexpensive schoolbook copies of individual plays, massive, leatherbound editions of the complete works, and everything in between. At some point, every one of those…

Folger fellow Peter Radford explores the history of picturing women athletes from ancient Greece to early modern Europe, how these images can be hard to find and interpret, but also why they’re so valuable and compelling.

A Folger fellow and former Olympian shares images and stories of 18th-century women athletes in England who competed in races, fights, cricket matches, and more.

Naomi Miller’s novel Imperfect Alchemist is about one of early modern England’s most significant literary figures: poet, playwright, translator, and scientist Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.

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…