Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T14:52:12.855Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - “Bess of Hardwick: Materializing Autobiography”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2021

Get access

Summary

Abstract

Many authors who have chosen to tell the life of Bess of Hardwick have offered book-length versions of a remarkable life that spanned more than 80 years (1527?–1608). There is so much about Bess to tell, and necessarily to imagine, that within biographies or more openly fictional accounts, writers lose sight of the fact that Bess told her own story repeatedly, in what Judith Butler has called “an open assemblage” of texts. Bess's many texts culminate in her embroidered, room-sized hangings, featuring eight female rulers. These hangings are a legacy that provides access to the wide range of Bess's feelings and aspirations, a legacy that provides evidence that she was the most ambitious female artist in sixteenth-century England.

Keywords: Elizabeth Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury; Bess of Hardwick; Mary Queen of Scots; textiles; biography; biofiction

Bess of Hardwick and the Artistry of Autobiography

Many authors who have chosen to tell the life of Bess of Hardwick, including Gillian Bagwell, David Durant, Kate Hubbard, Philippa Gregory, Mary Lovell, and Maud Stepney Rawson, have offered book-length versions of her remarkable life. That life spanned more than 80 years (1527?–1608) and is chockablock with details of the Tudor culture that created her, and which she in turn helped to create. There is so much about Bess to tell, and necessarily to imagine, that within biographies or more openly fictional accounts, writers lose sight of the fact that Bess told her own story repeatedly, in what Judith Butler has called “an open assemblage” of texts (p. 147). In particular, I find that Bess's many texts culminate in her embroidered, room-sized hangings featuring eight female rulers. These hangings are a legacy that provides access to the wide range of Bess's feelings and aspirations, a legacy that provides evidence that she was the most ambitious female artist in sixteenth-century England.

For at least 40 years, from the 1550s through the late 1590s, as Bess completed three great houses at Elizabethan Chatsworth, Old Hardwick Hall, and New Hardwick Hall, she invested her wit, energy, wealth, and connections to materialize her life through all available Renaissance artforms, organized by her skills as artist and project manager.

Type
Chapter
Information
Authorizing Early Modern European Women
From Biography to Biofiction
, pp. 87 - 100
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×