Years ago, when I started the English doctoral program at Northwestern University, I found a course offering that stopped me in my tracks: “Women Writers of the Renaissance.”
This was intriguing… and puzzling. As an undergrad at UCLA, I had delved deep into Renaissance literature. Philip Sidney, Thomas Wyatt, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, John Donne—these were old friends. I even had handshake acquaintance with lesser-known writers: Thomas Lodge, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, John Lyly. But in all the syllabi, all the readings, all the lectures, there was one thing I’d never encountered: a woman writer.
Of course, I enrolled. There, I met a batch of new friends: Marie de France, Anne Askew, Emilia Lanier. It was more than a pleasure to meet them—it was a revelation. At last, I was able to see myself reflected in this literary era that I loved so much.
One writer stood out for me in this group of silenced women writers—mainly because she refused to be silenced. Despite proscriptions against women’s writing, she told her story—loud and in print. She was Mary Wroth, niece to famed Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney. Wroth could have been heir to her uncle’s literary fame, his second self, but that honor went to another, his nephew. But she persisted. She wrote in all the forms that made her uncle famous: love sonnets, pastoral drama, romance narrative. In each, she injected her own uniquely feminine perspective, relentlessly questioning the received assumptions about gender relations, desire, love, and heartbreak.
After receiving my degree, I left academia to work as a writer and editor. I liked the work, but something was missing. And Mary Wroth lingered in my mind. I’d never written fiction, but this project called to me. So I started.
I was in for another revelation: In all my years of studying literature, I had no idea how to write it. Writing Wilton House, my debut, was the work of more than a decade. Luckily, I benefited from some tremendous teachers early on who supported me along the way, including Rebecca Makkai and Sarah Terez-Rosenbloom at Chicago’s StoryStudio. I had everything to learn, but the journey was exciting.
Today, I’m thrilled to enter the community of Regal House authors. I never left Chicago after graduation and live on the Northside with my karaoke-host husband Eamon and our two cats, Peggy and Val. I have a second novel in the works—same time period, different continent. I’m excited to build a fan base for my favorite woman writer of the Renaissance.
Regal House Publishing is proud to bring you Kay Daly’s Wilton House in the spring of 2027.
