As an early seventeenth-century writer of tragedy Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland, has an important place in literary history, though her play, like her first translation, was done when she was almost a child. She herself probably valued more highly her geographical, biographical and theological works, both translated and original. Her Edward II extraordinarily blends history, drama, and political commentary.
Milestones
Probably 1597; before autumn 1602 The teenage Elizabeth Tanfield made a translation, "The mirror of the Worlde translated / Out of French into Englishe / by E. T.", from the geographer Abraham Ortelius.


1630 Elizabeth Cary Falkland's
Reply of the Most Illustrious Cardinall of Perron appeared in print at
Douai: the only part of her translation from Cardinal Perron to be published.


October 1639 Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland, died of tuberculosis, in the
Catholic religion, and in her daughter's words "without any agony quietly as a child, being wholly spent by her disease."
