My Father Had a Daughter: Judith Shakespeare's Tale

I love books about Shakespearean times. This was a very good story with nice description and good character development. I really enjoyed it! Hope you do too!

Here is a wonderfully written story about a very little known character--Judith Shakespeare. I know about her father, and now I feel I know something about her. Tiffany's fluid, funny, authentic language brings Judith's story to life and adds a new dimension to her famous father. This book delivers everything a good historical novel should...I want more!

I was near the end of the book but was unable to finish that evening, so I GOT UP EARLY to finish reading it before leaving for work! It's got to be darn good to get me up early. This is a beautifully written tale with the wonderful quality of being spare and full at the same time. It has a "I can't wait to find out what happens" pace like an adventure story, but the adventure is Judith's life as she discovers her passion as an actor, woman, friend, and, finally, a daughter. Her personality is distinctly revealed. Judith is whole, complex, believable, as well as highly likeable, and her life and this book do not follow the beaten path.

I saw my mom reading this book and she just wouldn't stop. So when she finished, I picked it up to have a try. It's a good thing it's summer vacation because I spent the next two days reading about Judith. I really like her. The author brought that time and place alive with excellent descriptions of day to day life in the country and cities of England. I could feel Judith's inquisitiveness, excitement, confusion, fear, love, determination and courage. Anna Oehser

From the first page, the vivid character of Judith Shakespeare comes alive. I couldn't put the book down. Tiffany is steeped in Shakespeare's idiom, and it shows. For Judith's narrative, she has fashioned a language that unfailingly projects a sense of the heroine's historical remoteness while it yet remains clear to the contemporary reader. This is no small feat! The Publisher's Weekly review above is wrong about the language: "post-play," employs a Latinate construction in common use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (email me for examples), and I couldn't find the word "stylized" anywhere (I read the review before I read the book), leaving me to wonder whether the reviewer and I read the same book. (She also gave the story away, which is just plain irresponsible.) In any case, I found Judith Shakespeare's language a lyrical delight, the story engaging and no more implausible than most of Shakespeare's plays, and I loved the way Judith's character developed emotionally and spiritually. In fact, despite the market-conscious tone surrounding yet another "female-relative-of-a-famous-guy" book, I found the story and the character to be refreshingly non-PC. Anti-PC, even.