Replete with biographical introduction, discussions of sources and compositional methodology, this two volume work is the first to include all Mary Sidney Herbert's extant works.

Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, is the most important Elizabethan woman writer and patron outside the royal family. By astute use of the genres permitted to women, she supported the Protestant cause, introduced continental literary genres, expanded opportunities for later womenwriters, and influenced seventeenth-century lyric and drama by such writers as John Donne, George Herbert, Mary Wroth, and William Shakespeare. This scholarly edition in two volumes is the first to include all her extant works: Volume I prints her three original poems, the disputed `Dolefull Lay ofClorinda', her translations from Petrarch, Mornay, and Garnier, and all her known letters. Volume II contains her metrical paraphrases of Psalms 44-150. The edition also provides a biographical introduction, discussion of her sources and methods of composition, textual annotation, and a detailedcommentary.

It is long overdue that someone took a closer look at the brilliant Mary Sidney. I have a suspicion that Mary Sidney’s life, and especially her dedication to the English language after her brother’s death, may throw important light on the mysterious authorship of the Shakespeare plays and poems. —Mark Rylance Actor; Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 1996–2006; Chairman of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust For more than two hundred years, a growing number of researchers have questioned whether the man named William Shakespeare actually wrote the works attributed to him. There is no paper trail for William Shakespeare—no record that he was ever paid for writing, nothing in his handwriting but a few signatures on legal documents, no evidence of his presence in the royal court except as an actor in his later years, no confirmation of his involvement in the literary circles of the time. With so little information about this man—and even less evidence connecting him to the plays and sonnets—what can and what can’t we assume about the author of the greatest works of the English language? For the first time, Robin P. Williams presents an in-depth inquiry into the possibility that Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, wrote the works attributed to the man named William Shakespeare. As well educated as Queen Elizabeth I, this woman was at the forefront of the literary movement in England, yet not allowed to write for the public stage. But that’s just the beginning . . . The first question I am asked by curious freshmen in my Shakespeare course is always, “Who wrote these plays anyway?” Now, because of Robin Williams’ rigorous scholarship and artful sleuthing, Mary Sidney Herbert will forever have to be mentioned as a possible author of the Shakespeare canon. Sweet Swan of Avon doesn’t pretend to put the matter to rest, but simply shows how completely reasonable the authorship controversy is, and how the idea of a female playwright surprisingly answers more Shakespearean conundrums than it creates... —Cynthia Lee Katona Professor of Shakespeare and Women’s Studies, Ohlone College; Author of Book Savvy

Despite her fascinating life and her importance as a writer, until now Lady Mary Wroth has never been the subject of a full-length biography. Margaret Hannay's reliance on primary sources results in some corrections, as well as additions, to our knowledge of Wroth's life, including Hannay's discovery of the career of her son William, the marriages of her daughter Katherine, her grandchildren, her last years, the date of her death, and the subsequent history of her manuscripts. This biography situates Lady Mary Wroth in her family and court context, emphasizing the growth of the writer's mind in the sections on her childhood and youth, with particular attention to her learned aunt, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, as literary mentor, and to her Continental connections, notably Louise de Coligny, Princess of Orange, and her stepson Prince Maurice. Subsequent chapters of the biography treat her experience at the court of Queen Anne, her relationships with parents and siblings, her love for her cousin William Herbert, her marriage to Robert Wroth, the birth and early death of her only legitimate child, her finances and properties, her natural children, her grandchildren, and her last years in the midst of England's civil wars. Throughout the biography attention is paid to the complex connections between Wroth's life and work. The narrative is enhanced with a chronology; family trees for the Sidneys and Wroths; a map of Essex, showing where Wroth lived; a chart of family alliances; portraits; and illustrations from her manuscripts.

Miller revisits and reimagines the life of one of Shakespeare's neglected female literary contemporaries, Mary Sidney Herbert.

Gender, Interpretation, and Political Rule in Sidney's Arcadia studies cultural ideologies regarding gender and monarchy in early modern England by examining transformations of a single text, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, in their historical contexts. It reveals changing tensions in the ideological struggles over queenship, especially with respect to cultural debates focused on anxieties about gendered reception and interpretation of persuasive rhetoric. The cultural shift between about 1550 and 1650 regarding gendered interpretation and political rule--a shift that was by no means complete or homogenous--reflects the changing position of women and their relationship to language within early modern domestic and political ideological discourses. The book begins by investigating primary cultural, political, and historical sources in order to provide a cultural scaffolding helpful to the interpretation of Sidney's enormously popular work. These sources include conduct manuals, gynecocratic debates, paintings, poems, diaries, pamphlets, and letters. Gender, Interpretation, and Political Rule then considers the initial version of the Arcadia (the Old Arcadia) Sidney authored and argues that Sidney's involvement in the marriage debate regarding the Duke of Anjou's courtship of Elizabeth I in the late 1570s shaped his representations of female characters and their questionable ability to interpret persuasive rhetoric. Next, the book turns to Sidney's expanded and revised version (the New Arcadia), authorized and published by his sister the Countess of Pembroke Mary Sidney Herbert. The New Arcadia ultimately provides a more positive representation of women readers and rulers and reveals a shift in cultural understandings of women's relationship to the persuasive rhetoric that both describes and enacts political power and authority. The penultimate chapter examines paradigms of active reading and their political consequences in Lady Mary Wroth's The Countess of Montgomery's Urania that demonstrate a need for well-balanced identification with characters. Finally, this book focuses on a little-studied seventeenth-century continuation of Sidney's work by a young woman, Anna Weamys, who asserts her authority as an interpreter of Sidney's Arcadia and in the process creates a political commentary about the legitimacy of female authority and influence just after the English Civil War.

Philip Sidney and his sister Mary translated the biblical psalms into some of the greatest lyric poems of the English Renaissance. This is the first complete edition for over forty years, providing the Psalms in an authoritative modernized text, with glosses and notes and an introduction setting the Psalms in their literary and cultural context.