Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen

  Sixteen century Irish clan leader Grace O’Malley was the most famous “pirate queen” in the English-speaking world, and in fact the woman for whom the term seems to have been coined. Ireland in the sixteenth century was a decentralized society, ruled by independent clan chieftains who were continually at war with each other. It…

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Bess of Hardwick–Merry Widow?

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been thinking about widows in the context of writing about women warriors. As a result, I took a little side trip through the concept of the merry widow*–which brought me to someone I haven’t thought about in a long time, Bess of Hardwick, the Countess of Shrewsbury. (Or more formally,…

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