Elizabeth Melvill

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EM was a staunch Scottish Presbyterian whose surviving poems and letters almost all relate to the efforts of James the Sixth and First to impose episcopacy and other changes on the Kirk. Their religious content is thus political as well. A number of unpublished poems have been very recently identified. Her best-known text is an allegorical dream-vision, a first-person narrative of the religious life as a quest and an arduous journey towards the celestial goal. S. M. Dunnigan in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls her one of the most important religious writers in Renaissance Scotland.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
  • BirthName: Elizabeth Melvill
    She signed her own name this way. The Feminist Companion, British Library Catalogue, and Early English Books Online spell her name Melvill, while the old and new Dictionary of National Biography, the editor of the Ashgate facsimile, anthologists Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson , and editor Jamie Reid Baxter , all spell Melville with the e.
    Feminist Companion Archive.
    British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
    “Early English Books Online”. ProQuest Databases.
    Blake, Robert, and C. S. Nicholls, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography, 1971-1980. Oxford University Press, 1986.
    Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
    Melvill, Elizabeth. “Ane Godlie Dreame”. The Poets, I, edited by Susanne Woods et al., Ashgate, 2001.
    Stevenson, Jane, and Peter Davidson, editors. Early Modern Women Poets (1520-1700). Oxford University Press, 2001.

  • Married: Colville
    She has often been called Colville or Colvil, but married women in Scotland did not take their husbands' names.
    Baxter, Jamie Reid. “Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross: new light from Fife”. The Innes Review, Vol.
    68
    , No. 1, May 2017, pp. 38-77.
    44
  • Titled: Lady Colville of Culros
    She was called by various titles, but erroneously.
    Baxter, Jamie Reid. “Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross: new light from Fife”. The Innes Review, Vol.
    68
    , No. 1, May 2017, pp. 38-77.
    44
  • Indexed: Melville; M. M. Gentlewoman of Culros; Lady Culross
    Baxter, Jamie Reid. “Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross: new light from Fife”. The Innes Review, Vol.
    68
    , No. 1, May 2017, pp. 38-77.
    49
    ; Eliz. Melvil, Lady Culros yonger

Milestones

About 1575

Submissions to the International Genealogical Index put EM 's birth at this time, but probably they are highly speculative; recent scholarship suggests a few years later.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Baxter, Jamie Reid. “Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross: new light from Fife”. The Innes Review, Vol.
68
, No. 1, May 2017, pp. 38-77.
38n1

Probably after March 1603

EM is now identified as the M. M. (for Mistress Melville) listed on the title-page as author of Ane Godlie Dreame, Compylit in Scottish Meter, a 60-stanza dream-vision poem printed at Edinburgh this year.
Rebecca Laroche associates the poem's appearance in print with James VI 's accession to the throne as James I of the southern kingdom.
Laroche, Rebecca. “Elizabeth Melville and Her Friends: Seeing ‘Ane Godlie Dreame’ through Political Lenses”. CLIO, Vol.
34
, No. 3, 1 Mar.–31 May 2005, pp. 277-95.
286
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
172

Probably after January 1604

A Godly Dreame, a translation into English of the Scots-language Ane Godlie Dreame (issued by the same Edinburgh publisher the year before) is probably the work of the original author, EM .
Melvill, Elizabeth. A Godly Dreame. Robert Charteris.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
172
qtd. in
Laroche, Rebecca. “Elizabeth Melville and Her Friends: Seeing ‘Ane Godlie Dreame’ through Political Lenses”. CLIO, Vol.
34
, No. 3, 1 Mar.–31 May 2005, pp. 277-95.
287

In or after 1640

EM 's date of death seems to be unrecorded, but it must have been after 1639, and is assigned to this year by the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Elizabeth Melville
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
172

Biography

Birth and Family

About 1575

Submissions to the International Genealogical Index put EM 's birth at this time, but probably they are highly speculative; recent scholarship suggests a few years later.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Baxter, Jamie Reid. “Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross: new light from Fife”. The Innes Review, Vol.
68
, No. 1, May 2017, pp. 38-77.
38n1

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