Unfolding the Story of Bess of Hardwick’s Letters
Published: 5 April 2011
Revealing news and gossip, Renaisance-style, in the letters of Bess of Hardwick - one of Elizabethan England’s most famous figures
The AHRC Letters of Bess of Hardwick Project (English Language) is proud to launch Unsealed: The Letters of Bess of Hardwick, an exhibition at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, on Friday, 8 April 2011.
All of the Elizabethan world populates the letters of Bess of Hardwick, and Bess herself wrote hundreds of letters throughout her life: they were her lifeline to her travelling children and husbands, to the court at London, and to news from the world at large. And when she built and moved to Hardwick Hall in the final years of her life, the old countess received current news and gossip into her house through her correspondence. Unsealed presents the world of Bess of Hardwick’s letters to a general public for the first time.
Now known as ‘Bess of Hardwick’, Elizabeth, countess of Shrewsbury (c.1522-1608), is one of Elizabethan England’s most famous figures. She was an influential matriarch and dynast, lady at Elizabeth I’s court, and the builder of great stately homes like Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth House. The story of Bess’s life as told to date typically emphasises her modest birth, her rise through the ranks of society, her four husbands, each of greater wealth than the last, and her ambitious aggrandisement of her family. Yet this biographical portrayal takes little account of her more than 230 letters. The AHRC Letters of Bess of Hardwick Project team has been working on this important corpus of Renaissance letters for more than two years to date. The project’s output will culminate in a state-of-the-art online edition of Bess of Hardwick’s correspondence, which is due to be launched later this year. The team will also publish a monograph to consider the letters in their entirety and complexity, and uncover just who Bess of Hardwick was. The exhibition, Unsealed, is an additional and exciting project outcome.
Created by postdoctoral researcher Dr Anke Timmermann, with support from project PI Dr Alison Wiggins and in collaboration with the National Trust, Unsealed lets Bess and her correspondents tell their stories in their own words, in a combination of banners, facsimiles and interactive features for both children and adults. The exhibition podcasts, which feature staff from around the University of Glasgow in the roles of Bess’s correspondents, can be accessed via smartphone by exhibition visitors, or on any web browser at any time. The exhibition will remain at Hardwick Hall throughout the summer season and will be seen by thousands of visitors.
Unsealed is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, and supported by the National Trust and the University of Glasgow.
Logo background image by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
First published: 5 April 2011
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