Women and Cultures of Portraiture in the British Literary Renaissance

Yasmin Arshad is a former Honorary Research Fellow at UCL, from where she was awarded a PhD in English and an MA in Shakespeare in History. She is author of Imagining Cleopatra: Performing Gender and Power in Early Modern England (2019), and co-editor, with Chris Laoutaris, of Women and Cultures of Portraiture in the British Literary Renaissance (2026). She has published articles in the British Art Journal and in Early Modern Theatre and mounted a production of Samuel Daniel’s Tragedie of Cleopatra, the first such staging of the play in four-hundred years.Chris Laoutaris is Associate Professor at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio, Shakespeare and the Countess: The Battle that Gave Birth to the Globe, Bleed and See, and co-editor of Anne-thology: Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare. He is also a Fellow of the English Association, Higher Education Academy, Royal Society of Arts, and Royal Historical Society.

This wonderful book shines new light on a dazzling cast of female characters, many of whom have remained in the shadows for more than 400 years. Impeccably researched and endlessly fascinating.

• Notes on ContributorsList of IllustrationsIntroduction: Towards an Activist Intermediality: The Legacies of Portraiture’s FeminismsYasmin Arshad (University College London, UK) and Chris Laoutaris (The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK)Part 1: Negotiating Royal Power: Propaganda, Encryption and the Visual Rhetoric of Persuasion 1. Susanna Horenbout and the Politics of Illumination at the Court of Henry VIIISusan E. James (Independent Scholar and Art Historian, UK)2. Joint Iconography for Joint Sovereigns: Mary Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, and the Campaign for the Association, c. 1578–1584 Susan Doran (Jesus College, University of Oxford, UK) and Paulina Kewes (Jesus College, University of Oxford, UK) 3. Elizabeth I at SixtyHelen Hackett (University College London, UK) and Karen Hearn (University College London, UK; formerly Curator of 16th- and 17th-Century British Art at Tate Britain, UK)4. “Still Renewing Wronges”?: Politics, Identity and Encryption in Gheeraerts’ ‘Persian Lady’ PortraitChris Laoutaris (The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK) and Yasmin Arshad (University College London, UK)5. ‘A Moor to a Maiden’: The Presence of Black Africans in the Portraiture of Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth Ana Howie (Cornell University, USA)Part 2: Inter-Visual Interventions: Identity, Agency and Confrontations with the Self 6. Embroidery and Self-PortraitureJane Stevenson (Campion Hall, University of Oxford, UK) 7. The dead shadow: Portraiture, Murder and Female agency in the early modern dumb showKeir Elam (University of Bologna, Italy)8. Capitalizing on Beauty: Blazons and Portraiture in Early Modern English VerseJaime Goodrich (Wayne State University, Michigan, USA)9. The Portrait of a Lady from the Islamic World in Early Modern England: ‘Teresia, Countess Shirley’, by William Larkin, c. 1611–13Bernadette Andrea (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) 10. Flights of Fancy and Practical Matters: Creativity in Self-Portraiture of Margaret Cavendish and Hannah Woolley Anna (Anya) Riehl Bertolet (Auburn University, USA) Part 3: Visualizing Women’s Networks: Patronage, Curating and Collecting 11. Catholicae Virgines nos Sumus Mutare vel Tempore Spernimus: Helena Wintour’s Subversive EmbroideriesJanet Graffius (Curator of Collections and Historic Libraries, Stonyhurst, UK)12. Mary Ward and the Figuring of Female NetworksCaroline Bicks (University of Maine, USA)13. Locating the Cavendish women in Ben Jonson’s The New Inn and the murals at Bolsover CastleCrosby Stevens (University of Sheffield; formerly Curator of Art for English Heritage, UK) 14. Richard Crashaw’s Lady Margaret Beaufort in the Liber Memorialis at St John’s College, CambridgeAnna Clark (University of Oxford and the National Portrait Gallery, UK) Select Bibliography Index