Full Description
Lady Mary Wroth's private manuscript, printed here for the first time, shows her to be a great poet, more psychologically insightful, verbally sophisticated, and boldly original than scholars had realized. Her carefully curated and re-conceptualized printed collection also reveals her to be a remarkably self-reflexive and critically astute writer. When the manuscript and printed sequences are read together, as this edition encourages readers to do, Wroth's poetry is seen clearly as innovative, erotic, and shrewdly multivalent.
Contents
Acknowledgments xv
Illustrations xvii
Abbreviations xix
INTRODUCTION 1
The Other Voice 1
Art and Life 1
Family, Politics, and Literary Tradition 19
The Life of Mary Sidney/Wroth 26
Wroth and Herbert: Betrothal and Marriage 33
Herbert's "Elegy" and Wroth's "Penshurst Mount" 38
"Pamphilia to Amphilanthus" in Manuscript 44
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus in Print 52
Love's Victory 53
The Countess of Montgomery's Urania 58
The Afterlife of Wroth's Sonnets 64
Editorial Principles and Practices 66
PAMPHILIA TO AMPHILANTHUS: THE MANUSCRIPT 73
PAMPHILIA TO AMPHILANTHUS: THE PRINTED TEXT 205
APPENDIX 1: Herbert's "Elegy" and Wroth's "Penshurst Mount" 267
APPENDIX 2: Table of Numbers for Manuscript and Printed Poems 275
APPENDIX 3: Copies of the 1621 Printed Text 281
Bibliography 291
Index of First Lines 301
Index 305
