The Sixteenth Century in 100 Women

Amy Licence

Apr 2023 · Pen and Sword History

About this ebook

This retelling of the sixteenth century introduces the reader to a gallery of amazing women from queens to commoners, who navigated the patriarchal world in memorable and life-changing ways all around the world. Amy Licence has scoured the records from Europe and beyond to compile this testament to female lives and achievements, telling the stories of mistresses and martyrs, witches and muses, pirates and jesters, doctors and astronomers, escapees and murderesses, colonists and saints. Read about the wife of astrologer John Dee, the women who inspired Michelangelo, the jester who saved the life of Henry IV of France, the beloved mistress of the Sultan Suleiman the Great, the wife of Ivan the Terrible, whose murder unleashed terror, set against the everyday lives of those women who did not make the history books. Introducing a number of new faces, including tales of women from Morocco, Nigeria, Japan, Chile, India and Turkey, this book will delight those who are looking to broaden their knowledge on the sixteenth century and celebrate the lost women of the past.

About the author

AMY LICENCE is a best-selling author and historian of the medieval and early modern period, specializing in the lives of women, from queens to commoners. Amy has written for The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Statesman, BBC History, The English Review, The Huffington Post, The London Magazine and other places. She has been interviewed regularly for BBC radio, including Woman's Hour, and appeared in Philippa Gregory's BBC2 documentary The Real White Queen and Her Rivals in 2013 and Yesterday Channel's Private Lives of the Tudors in 2016. Her website can be found at amylicence.weebly.com