: The novel highlights the women in the Shakespeare family. The Nature of Grief in Hamnet

: Hamnet's twin sister, Judith, first becomes ill. Hamnet later dies from the fever at age 11.

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a luminous reimagining of the life and death of William Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet Shakespeare , and the profound grief that likely inspired one of literature's greatest tragedies, Hamlet .

The novel explores how personal tragedy fuels creation. Four years after his son's death, the "husband" writes a play called Hamlet —a name that was interchangeable with Hamnet in Elizabethan times. O’Farrell suggests that this act was a way for a grieving father to give his son immortality. The novel is available in digital formats:

: Agnes is portrayed as an unconventional woman with a talent for medicinal herbs.