The essays in this volume analyze strategies adopted by contemporary novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and biographers interested in bringing the stories of early modern women to modern audiences. It also pays attention to the historical women creators themselves, who, be they saints or midwives, visual artists or poets and playwrights, stand out for their roles as active practitioners of their own arts and for their accomplishments as creators. Whether they delivered infants or governed as monarchs, or produced embroideries, letters, paintings or poems, their visions, the authors argue, have endured across the centuries. As the title of the volume suggests, the essays gathered here participate in a wider conversation about the relation between biography, historical fiction, and the growing field of biofiction (that is, contemporary fictionalizations of historical figures), and explore the complicated interconnections between celebrating early modern women and perpetuating popular stereotypes about them.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Introduction: Biography, Biofiction, and Gender in the Modern Age
- James Fitzmaurice, Naomi J. Miller, and Sara Jayne Steen
- Section I: Fictionalizing Biography
- 2. Sister Teresa: Fictionalizing a Saint
- 3. Portrait of an Unknown Woman: Fictional Representations of Levina Teerlinc, Tudor Paintrix
- 4. An Interview with Dominic Smith, Author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos: Capturing the Seventeenth Century
- 5. Lanyer: The Dark Lady and the Shades of Fiction
- 6. Archival Bodies, Novel Interpretations, and the Burden of Margaret Cavendish
- Section II: Materializing Authorship
- 7. Bess of Hardwick: Materializing Autobiography
- 8. The Queen as Artist: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart
- 9. “Very Secret Kept”: Facts and Re-Creation in Margaret Hannay’s Biographies of Mary Sidney and Mary Wroth
- 10. Imagining Shakespeare’s Sisters: Fictionalizing Mary Sidney Herbert and Mary Sidney Wroth
- 11. Anne Boleyn, Musician: A Romance Across Centuries and Media
- Section III: Performing Gender
- 12. Reclaiming Her Time:
Artemisia Gentileschi Speaks to the Twenty-First Century
- 13. Beyond the Record: Emilia and Feminist Historical Recovery
- 14. Writing, Acting, and the Notion of Truth in Biofiction About Early Modern Women Authors
- 15. Jesusa Rodríguez’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Reflections on an Opaque Body
- Section IV: Authoring Identity
- 16. From Hollywood Film to Musical Theater: Veronica Franco in American Popular Culture
- 17. The Role of Art in Recent Biofiction on Sofonisba Anguissola
- 18. “I am Artemisia”: Art and Trauma in Joy McCullough’s Blood Water Paint
- 19. The Lady Arbella Stuart, a “Rare Phoenix”: Her Re-Creation in Biography and Biofiction
- 20. The Gossips’ Choice: Extending the Possibilities for Biofiction with Creative Uses of Sources
- 21. Afterword
- Index
- List of Figures
- Figure 3.1. Portrait Miniature of an Unknown Woman, c. 1560, watercolor on vellum, attributed to Levina Teerlinc (c. 1510/20–1576). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
- Figure 4.1. Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait, c. 1633. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss.
- Figure 8.1. The image on the left is from the portrait attributed to William Scrots (Royal Collection); the central one from the “Ermine” portrait variously attributed to William Segar and Nicholas Hilliard (Hatfield House); the image on the right, by an
- Figure 8.2. Flora Robson as Elizabeth I and Vivien Leigh as Cynthia in Fire Over England (1937), United Artists. Masheter Movie Archive / Alamy Stock Photo.
- Figure 10.1. Cover image for Imperfect Alchemist. Photograph courtesy of Allison & Busby.
- Figure 11.1. Waxwork Minstrel with Anne Boleyn, Hever Castle & Gardens, Kent, UK. Photograph courtesy of Hever Castle & Gardens.
- Figure 11.2. Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, “Anne Boleyn Advising Henry VIII to Dismiss Cardinal Wolsey.” Photograph courtesy of VAN HAM Fine Art Auctioneers / Saša Fuis.
- Figure 14.1. Karen Eterovich as Aphra Behn in Love Arm’d (2002). Photo by Rob Ferguson. By kind permission of Karen Eterovich.
- Figure 14.2. Emilie Philpott Jumping the Shark at the dress rehearsal of Cavendish, Woolf, and the Cypriot Goddess Natura. Nicosia, Cyprus, 7 April 2017. Photo Credit / Permission: James Fitzmaurice.
- Figure 17.1. Attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola, Lady in A Fur Wrap (Glasgow, Pollok House). Photo credit: Album / Alamy Stock Photo.
- Figure 17.2. Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game (Poznan, National Museum). Photo credit: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.
- Figure 17.3. Sofonisba Anguissola, Family Portrait (Niva, Nivaagaards Art Gallery). Photo credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo.]
- Figure 18.1. Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, signed and dated 1610, oil on canvas. Collection Graf von Schönborn, Pommersfelden, Germany.
- Figure 18.2. Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, c. 1612–1613, oil on canvas. Museo Capidimonte, Naples, Italy.
- Figure 20.1. The frontispiece of Jane Sharp’s The Compleat Midwife’s Companion, 1724. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.
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