Following Shakespeare’s death in 1616, four women were crucial in ensuring the original work of the Bard was not forgotten. This was the Shakespeare Ladies Club. Formed in 1736, the club was a quartet of ‘Women of Quality’; three from the aristocracy and one a writer who ran a stationery shop, all educated and so enraptured by the plays of William Shakespeare that they met to read and discuss his transcendent genius. Not content with this, they used their power and influence to campaign successfully for a statue of their literary idol to be placed in Westminster Abbey – shamefully, to this day their efforts remain overlooked, as credit for the statue is still given to a group of men.

These women put their considerable wealth behind their lobbying for more Shakespeare plays; they convinced theatre managers to put on the original versions by promising to underwrite any financial losses. They had to overcome a post-Puritan culture that believed theatre to be immoral and no place for respectable women. After nearly 300 years, this book finally tells their remarkable story.

In the authors’ words: ‘The obstacles they faced were daunting, yet Susanna Shaftesbury, Elizabeth Boyd and the two Marys, Montagu and Cowper, each like the goddess Diana the archer, fired an aesthetic arrow that would strike a bullseye in Britain and, eventually, the entire world, as reviving Shakespeare has positively affected human culture to this day.’