Dark Lady: A Novel of Emilia Bassano Lanyer

(Paperback)

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Description

Emilia Bassano has four strikes against her: she is poor, beautiful, female, and intelligent in Elizabethan England. To make matters worse, she comes from a family of secret Jews. When she is raped as a teenager, she knows she probably will not be able to make a good marriage, so she becomes the mistress of a much older nobleman. During this time she falls in love with poet/player William Shakespeare, and they have a brief, passionate relationshipbut when the plague comes to England, the nobleman abandons her, leaving her pregnant and without financial security.
In the years that follow, Emilia is forced to make a number of difficult decisions in her efforts to survive, and not all of them turn out well for her. But ultimately, despite the disadvantaged position she was born to, she succeeds in pursuing her dreams of becoming a writerand even publishes a book of poetry in 1611 that makes a surprisingly modern argument for womens equality.

Reviews

2017-2018 Sarton Women's Book Awards Winner in Historical Fiction 2018 International Book Awards Finalist in Fiction: Historical Sweeping you away with its vivid, poetical writing, Dark Lady is a novel about a brilliant Elizabethan woman, a musician, commoner, and secret Jew who was barred from working as a musician because of her sex. Emilia Bassano Lanyer loves three very different men: the aging Lord Hunsdon who treasures her, the young Shakespeare who enchants her, and the man she marries, musician and soldier Lanyer. Her writing arises from her experience as a gifted woman in a world ruled by men. Dark Lady is a beautifully drawn portrait of an exceptional woman in a time of plague, war, and political danger. Stephanie Cowell, author of The Players, Claude and Camille, and Marrying Mozart "Emilia Bassano Lanyer emerges in this sweeping historical novel as more than the elusive Dark Lady of William Shakespeare's sonnets. She is an artist in her own right, mysterious indeed but also strong, resourceful, and intelligent enough to maneuver her way through a turbulent, dangerous world. Politics and poetry collide in this suspenseful tale of love, lust, and literature in Elizabethan England." Sarah Kennedy, author of The Altarpiece This isnt a book about court intrigue so much as the simpler human desire for self-expression, and the limits placed upon that. Accompanied by an engaging cast of secondary characters, Emilia is brought to appealingly vivid life and the book teems with the sights, sounds and scents of Tudor England. Its so hard to make Shakespeare feel like just another character in a book: the man has a historical aura that can completely derail a scene. But Ball manages, and the words she puts in his mouth are convincingly playful and fanciful. Its a well-written, engaging read and some of the prose is so beautifully crafted that you get a truly sensory appreciation for the setting. The Idle Woman

Author Bio

Charlene Ball holds a PhD in comparative literature and has taught English and womens studies at colleges and universities. Although she has written nonfiction, reviews, and academic articles, writing fiction has always been her first love. She has published fiction and nonfiction in The North Atlantic Review, Concho River Review, The NWSA Journal, and other journals. She has reviewed theater and written articles on the arts for Atlanta papers. She is a Fellow of the Hambidge Center for the Arts and held a residency at the Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. She attends fiction workshops by Carol Lee Lorenzo, and she belongs to a writers group that she helped found. She retired from the Womens Studies Institute (now the Institute for Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) at Georgia State University in 2009 and has been busier than ever with writing and bookselling. She also volunteers with her congregation and other social justice groups. She and her wife, Libby Ware, an author and bookseller, were married in May 2016.