The role of women as writers, literary and dramatic characters, and real queens in early modern Europe was central to the development of Tudor ideas about gender and women's place in society. Women and Tudor Tragedy investigates the link between gender and genre, identifying the relation between cultural history and mid-Tudor drama. This book establishes a way for reading women in early modern history, drama, and poetry by fusing discussions of gender in literature with historical analysis of tyranny and martyrdom in mid-Tudor culture. It considers the disparities between the representation of women in historical, political, and religious treatises by examining the complex portrayal of women, female speeches, and the rhetoric of good counsel. The author provides a discussion of the role of women in early English tragedies and in a variety of texts by women. Throughout the book, Allyna E. Ward asks in what ways these different ways of writing the Tudor women can help scholars better understand the place of women in English culture at the end of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, Ward traces the feminization of the rhetoric of counsel that takes place with the last Tudor monarchs as a way of accommodating female rule.

The turbulent Tudor Age never fails to capture the imagination. But what was it truly like to be a woman during this era? The Tudor period conjures up images of queens and noblewomen in elaborate court dress; of palace intrigue and dramatic politics. But if you were a woman, it was also a time when death during childbirth was rife; when marriage was usually a legal contract, not a matter for love, and the education you could hope to receive was minimal at best. Yet the Tudor century was also dominated by powerful and dynamic women in a way that no era had been before. Historian Elizabeth Norton explores the life cycle of the Tudor woman, from childhood to old age, through the diverging examples of women such as Elizabeth Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister; Cecily Burbage, Elizabeth's wet nurse; Mary Howard, widowed but influential at court; Elizabeth Boleyn, mother of a controversial queen; and Elizabeth Barton, a peasant girl who would be lauded as a prophetess. Their stories are interwoven with studies of topics ranging from Tudor toys to contraception to witchcraft, painting a portrait of the lives of queens and serving maids, nuns and harlots, widows and chaperones. Norton brings this vibrant period to colorful life in an evocative and insightful social history.

Few women of her time lived to see their name in print. But Katherine was no ordinary woman. She was Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother. This is her story.

The family of Anne Boleyn, the infamous wife of Henry VIII, appeared from nowhere at the end of the fourteenth century and rose to prominence at the beginning of a century that would end with a Boleyn woman, Elizabeth I, on the throne.

In John Banks’s Female Tragic Heroes, Paula de Pando offers the first monograph on Restoration playwright John Banks. De Pando analyses Banks’s civic model of she-tragedy in terms of its successful adaptation of early modern literary traditions and its engagement with contemporary political and cultural debates. Using Tudor queens as tragic heroes and specifically addressing female audiences, patrons and critics, Banks made women rather than men the subject of tragedy, revolutionising drama and influencing depictions of gender, politics, and history in the long eighteenth century.

The first ever comprehensive history of the queens, princesses and ladies of the Tudor family. Always more than mere foils of men, these Tudor women are fascinating in their own right.