“[A] fascinating excavation of four intellectual powerhouse women of the 16th and early 17th centuries . . . Targoff’s intent is to scrape away the layer of literary obscurity from Shakespeare’s sisters and present the pentimento as transcendent survivors. Their work indeed lives on.”—Tina Brown, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

"Targoff delivers a vibrant group portrait of four women writers in Elizabethan England, most of whom were ignored or obscured for centuries but were 'resurrected' by feminist scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries. . . . Targoff’s narrative is full of vivid personalities and intriguing tales of court alliances and rivalries. It’s an enlightening study of the era’s literary scene and the women who persevered despite their exclusion from it."—Publishers Weekly

"Ramie Targoff has written a vivid, finely crafted portrait of four extraordinary Renaissance women whose writing, long buried in archives, defied all the rules. Mary Sidney’s translations, Ameilia Lanyer’s poems, Anne Clifford’s diaries, and Elizabeth Cary’s dramas contained radical messages of autonomy at a time when women had few legal rights and almost no access to education. Raised to keep quiet and obey their husbands, these writers kept diaries, created female heroines, and gave women starring roles on the stage and page. Targoff, an esteemed scholar of Renaissance literature, restores these women to the starring roles they deserve in this fresh, galavanting, and indispensable history of Renaissance England. Shakespeare’s Sisters challenges and expands our historical memory in sweeping, cinematic prose. Scholarly storytelling at its finest."—Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath