Deanne Williams is Professor of English and Theatre Studies at York University, Canada. She is the author of The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare (2004), which won the Roland Bainton Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society, and Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood (2014).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsBiographical NoteNote on the TextIntroduction. Cultures of Girlhood Chapter One. A Theatre of Girlhood Gandersheim Girls Performance and Pedagogy Performing Girls, Performing Girlhood Humanist Hrotswitha Chapter Two. Performing Virginity Et tripident The Girlhood of the Virgin Mary ‘Not fourteen’ Chapter Three. The French Girlhood of Anne Boleyn Fille d’Honneur The Girlhood Reading of Claude de France Anne Boleyn’s Songbook Henry VIII and the Afterlife of Girlhood Chapter Four. Translating Daughters A Girl at her Desk A Girl and a Play A Girl on Stage Chapter Five. Faithful Shepherdesses ‘Courting of the Shepheardesses’ ‘Eliza, Queen of Shepheardes’ ‘Captive or Sheppardesses life’ Chapter Six. Wanton Ambling Nymphs A Glittering Procession Milksop Ladies ‘Enter a Nimpth’ ‘Fair Silver-buskined Nymphs’ Chapter Seven. Global Girlhoods A Girl in the World Spice Girl A Quintessence of Cordial Conclusion. Girl my Greatness NotesBibliographyIndex

Williams’s monograph deftly expands on her previous intellectual work on this subject by providing us with different paradigms of girlhood that still resonate today.