The Modern Alchemist by Richard Alan Miller

When people speculate about Shakespeare’s life and career, one place a lot of them go these days is to a woman named Emilia Bassano. I’m Michael Witmore, the Folger’s director. And guess what: No one has ever suggested that she was the Dark Lady of the Sonnets.įrom the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

One of the first to be published in English. Previous: Shakespeare and Game of Thrones | Next: Shakespeare in the Harlem Renaissance

We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. This podcast episode, “Your Partner in the Cause,” was produced by Richard Paul. Her first novel, Imperfect Alchemist, was published by Allison & Busby in 2020.įrom the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. She has written and edited nine books about early modern women authors and their worlds. Naomi Miller is a professor of English, as well as the Study of Women and Gender, at Smith College.

Naomi Miller on Mary Sidney Herbert and “Imperfect Alchemist”ĭr.

Listen to Shakespeare Unlimited on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, NPR One, or wherever you get your podcasts. Naomi Miller is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Plus, she discusses female alchemists of Elizabethan England, Sidney’s friends and beneficiaries, and how class shapes her characters’ outlooks. We talk to Miller about how she imagined the lives and voices of these literary lights, as well as Shakespeare, as she wrote her novel. Her name was Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. Naomi Miller’s novel Imperfect Alchemist is about one of early modern England’s most significant literary figures: a poet, playwright, translator, scientist, and colleague of writers like Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Mary Wroth, John Donne, and Emilia Lanier Bassano.

The Modern Alchemist by Richard Alan Miller