Imagining Shakespeare’s Sisters: Fictionalizing Mary Sidney Herbert and Mary Sidney Wroth: Mary Sidney Herbert (1561–1621) and Mary Wroth (1586–1652); authors

While initial critical attention to the phenomenon of biofiction centered upon male subjects and masculine narratives, the scholarly field has expanded significantly to address both feminist perspectives and female subjects.¹ Nonetheless, when attending to fiction about early modern subjects, one finds that popular novels about actual, rather than invented, Renaissance women often picture them in relation to powerful men. One need look no further than the steady stream of novels about the wives of Henry VIII, perpetuating a phenomenon that I have termed the “Noah’s ark approach,” which positions women in dependent relation to already canonical or culturally powerful male