num_pages: 300
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 relationship--but 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 writer--and even publishes a book of poetry in 1611 that makes a surprisingly modern argument for women's equality.
language: None
title: Dark Lady: A Novel of Emilia Bassano Lanyer
publisher: She Writes Press