Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
-
Standard Name: Pembroke, Mary Sidney Herbert,,, Countess of
Birth Name: Mary Sidney
Married Name: Mary Herbert
Titled: Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
Titled: Countess of Pembroke
Mary Sidney wrote with a generation of Protestant women models behind her.
Hannay, Margaret P. Philip’s Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Oxford University Press, http://U of A HSS.
x
But her reputation, even her literary existence, has been eclipsed by the almost mythic fame of her brother Philip. He was older, publicly known, and universally admired even before his death. He published nothing; his writings reached the wider world by passing through the hands of his sister and of their friend Fulke Greville
. Her writings encompass wholly independent texts, collaborations with Philip, and her revisions of work by him. The dates at which she wrote them are mostly debatable. But unlike any other Elizabethan noblewoman, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, published her non-religious works as well as her religious. Her work in translation (not only the psalms); and in lyric poetry and heroic drama (perhaps in pastoral romance as well) helped shape the mainstream literary tradition.
After being brought up in the Herbert family, Lady Mary Villiers was given away (not yet in her teens) in a dynastic marriage, celebrated with great pomp on 8 January 1635, to Charles, Lord Herbert
Family and Intimate relationships
Katherine Parr
KP
's younger sister, Anne, married William Herbert
(later first Earl of Pembroke) and bore a son whose wife was Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke
.
Three months after her first husband's death, the twenty-year-old Margaret Devereux (later MH
) married Thomas Sidney
(younger brother of the poets Sir Philip Sidney
and Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke
).
Hoby, Margaret. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599-1605, edited by Joanna Moody, Sutton, p. xv - lvii.
lv
Family and Intimate relationships
Margaret Hoby
Editor Joanna Moody
suggests that as the wife of Thomas Sidney, MH
must have had contact and even exchanged intellectual influence with her sister-in-law Lady Pembroke
, but this is pure speculation.
Hoby, Margaret. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599-1605, edited by Joanna Moody, Sutton, p. xv - lvii.
xxii n16, xxxii n36
Family and Intimate relationships
Sir Philip Sidney
His mother, Lady Mary Sidney
, was a duke's daughter and sister of two brothers who became earls (one of them, Robert Dudley
, the Earl of Leicester and the favourite of Queen Elizabeth
)...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland
The Sidney family was in fact a kind of royalty of literature. Dorothy's Sidney grandfather was a poet, and the fame of her great-uncle and great-aunt Sir Philip
and Mary Sidney, later Countess of Pembroke
Spence, Richard T. Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery. Sutton Publishing.
91, 93-4
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Mary Wroth
LMW
's aunt and godmother, Mary, Countess of Pembroke
, was a significant figure in her life. Pembroke wrote to the younger Mary's mother in 1590 sending my blessing to my pretey [sic] Daughter.
Waller, Gary F. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke: A Critical Study of Her Writings and Literary Milieu. University of Salzburg, http://BLC.
21
Birth
Sir Philip Sidney
SPS
, poet, fiction-writer, critic, and elder brother of Mary, Countess of Pembroke
, was born at Penshurst Place, near Tonbridge in Kent, the eldest in his family of seven children.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Anthologization
Lady Jane Lumley
The next year, a modern scholarly edition of LJL
's work appeared, as The Tragedie of Iphigeneia, in Three Tragedies by Renaissance Women, edited by Diane Purkiss
together with plays by the Countess of Pembroke