Isabella Whitney

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Standard Name: Whitney, Isabella
Birth Name: Isabella Whitney
Married Name: Isabella Eldershae
Pseudonym: Is. W.
IW is remarkable as the first woman—middle-class too, not noble—to publish a book of poems in English, which she did in 1567. She went on to issue another collection and several separate poems.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Reception Ephelia
Maureen E. Mulvihill calls Female Poems the first volume of English poetry in which a female voice takes a purely secular viewpoint.
Mulvihill, Maureen E. “Sly Stuart Duchess: The Many Masks of Mary Villiers (’Ephelia’)”. The Female Spectator (1995-), 1 June 2002– 2024, pp. 1-5.
3
Though the much earlier Isabella Whitney has a better claim to this...
Textual Features Germaine Greer
The selection of poets is highly informed. It reaches back in time before GG 's anthology Kissing the Rod, to Anne Askew and Isabella Whitney , and forward to Carol Ann Duffy and Margaret Atwood
Textual Production Jane Anger
The title continues: Jane Anger her Protection for Women To defend them against the Scandalous Reportes of a late Surfeiting Lover, and all other like Venerians that complaine so to be overcloyed with womens kindnesse...
Textual Production Lady Hester Pulter
In the same manuscript album as her poems and romance, LHP included a collection of emblem poems titled The Sighs of a Sad Soul Emblematically Breathed Forth by the Noble Hadassah.
Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014, pp. 1-40.
27, 185
These...

Timeline

1567: George Turbervile published Heroycall Epistles...

Writing climate item

1567

George Turbervile published Heroycall Epistles (London: Henry Denham), a translation of Ovid 's Heroides.
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.
Lyne, Raphael. A Case for Isabella Whitney: Aeneas and Isabella Homepage. http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/aeneas/attrib.htm.

Texts

Whitney, Isabella. A Sweet Nosegay, or Pleasant Posy. Editor Students of Sara Jayne Steen, An Academic Edition, Montana State University.
Whitney, Isabella. A Sweet Nosgay, Or Pleasant Posye. 1st ed., Richard Jones, 1573.
Whitney, Isabella. The Copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her unconstant Lover. 1st ed., Richard Jones, 1567.
Whitney, Isabella. “The lamentacion of a Gentilwoman upon the death of her late deceased frend William Gruffith Gent”. A Gorgious Gallery, of Gallant Inventions, edited by Thomas Procter, Richard Jones, 1578.
Whitney, Isabella. “The lamentacion of a Gentilwoman upon the death of her late deceased frend William Gruffith Gent”. A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, edited by Hyder E. Rollins et al., Harvard University Press, 1926.