Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
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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.
Sir John Davies
of Hereford, in dedicating The Muses Sacrifice, 1612, to Elizabeth Lady Cary, Lady Pembroke
, and Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford
, praised Cary's plays as a source of pride to...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Maureen Duffy
The protagonist, Jade Green, runs her own practice, which is, to put it kindly, struggling. (Sister heroines like US detective writer Sue Graham
's Kinsey Mahone come to mind.) She is consulted by an academic...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Eleanor Douglas
This seems not to have been a love-match. Sir John was at this time nearly fifty and physically unattractive. He was a family friend from Wiltshire.
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
Occupation
John Donne
The highly literary great ladies of the Renaissance were part of Donne's writing environment. His predecessors in metrical experiment included Mary, Countess of Pembroke
. He wrote in praise of her and of minor court...
Occupation
Lady Anne Clifford
LAC
attended the funeral of Anne of Denmark
; here she enjoyed much talk with my Old Lady of Pembroke
Clifford, Lady Anne. The Diary of Anne Clifford, 1616-1619: A Critical Edition. Editor Acheson, Katherine O., Garland.
111
and other acquaintances: she notes this to be the last time she saw Lady Pembroke.
Clifford, Lady Anne. The Diary of Anne Clifford, 1616-1619: A Critical Edition. Editor Acheson, Katherine O., Garland.
Spence, Richard T. Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery. Sutton Publishing.
91, 93-4
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Bradstreet
AB
was writing poetry while still in her teens. Langland
's Piers Plowman, Sir Philip Sidney
and the Countess of Pembroke
(whose mother, like AB
, was born a Dudley), and Camden
's life...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Matilda Betham
Her attitudes and judgements are unfailingly interesting. She knows that Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
(whom she calls Mary Herbert), was not only a great encourager of letters but also herself an ingenious...
Friends, Associates
Emilie Barrington
EB
's friendship with Frederic Leighton
was in its early stages connected with her friendship with his sister Alexandra Orr
(author of A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning). When she ceased to...
Textual Features
Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
In a dedication to her grandchildren (unpaginated), BBBD
gives some history of her translations, made at different and distant periods of my life.
Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre,. Translations from the Italian. C. Whittingham.
