Try Before You Trust: To All Gentlewomen and Other Maids in Love
By Constance Briones
Publication Date: 10th January 2024 (eBook) / July (paperback)
Publisher: Historium Press
Pages: 286 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
What if Taylor Swift found herself penning songs about love in Elizabethan England when women were required to be chaste, obedient, and silent?
Isabella Whitney, an ambitious and daring eighteen-year-old maidservant turned poet, sets out to do just that. Having risked reputation and virtue by allowing her passions for her employer's aristocratic nephew to get the better of her, Isabella Whitney enters the fray of the pamphlet wars, a scurrilous debate on the merits of women.
She's determined to make her mark by becoming the first woman to write a poem defending women in love, highlighting the deceptive practices of the men who woo them. Her journey to publication is fraught with challenges as she navigates through the male-dominated literary world and the harsh realities of life in sixteenth-century London for a single woman.
Loosely based on the life of Elizabethan poet Isabella Whitney, this is a compelling tale of a young woman's resilience and determination to challenge the status quo and leave her mark in a world that was not ready for her.
Excerpt
A sorrowful expression crossed his face. "When I said I loved you, I meant it. I have loved you like no other woman I've known," he uttered with a hint of resentment that I doubted his love for me.
I believed him, but how he could bury his love for me to procure a more comfortable married life with Rose Clavell was unfathomable.
I let go of his arm and opened the door. "Aye, you loved me, Robert. But not enough to weather the tribulations of love."
He averted his gaze and hesitated before leaving. It was as if he wanted to say more in self-defense, but it would have fallen on deaf ears. He walked briskly past me and down the stairs. When I heard the central door shut, I slumped to the floor. I could feel angry tears in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Like the women in Heroides, I, too, had fallen victim to my passion and was forsaken by a man I loved too fast and too soon. But unlike them, I would not break.
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Constance Briones
Constance Briones has a Master's in Woman's History, which informs her writing.
She first learned about the subject of her debut historical fiction novel, the sixteenth-century English poet Isabella Whitney, while doing research for her thesis on literacy and women in Tudor England. Isabella Whitney's gusty personality to defy the conventions of her day, both in her thinking and actions, impressed Constance enough to imagine that she would make a very engaging literary heroine.
As a writer, Constance is interested in highlighting the little-known stories of women in history. She is a contributing writer to Historical Times, an online magazine. When not writing, she lends her time as an educational docent for her town's historical society.
She contently lives in Connecticut with her husband and Maine coon sibling cats, Thor and Percy.
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