Lady Mary Wroth

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Standard Name: Wroth, Lady Mary
Birth Name: Mary Sidney
Styled: Lady Mary Sidney
Married Name: Lady Mary Wroth
LMW achieved two firsts with a single publication in 1621: the first full-length fiction (a prose romance) to be written in English by a woman and the first sonnet sequence in English by a woman (discounting the less than certain ascription of a sonnet sequence based on Psalm 51 to Anne Locke ). Outside this landmark publication, she is known to have written other poems, a play, and surviving letters.
Full-length portrait of Lady Mary Wroth attributed to John de Critz the elder, c. 1620. She stands holding a theorbo that reaches to her shoulder, in a picture with striking touches of red. Wroth's stiff, embroidered gown and large, transparent ruff are pale; her petticoat and belt are red, and her arms, shoulders, and bust are picked out with red bows. She rests an arm of a red sofa, with red curtains behind.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland
The poet Lady Mary Wroth was an aunt of DSCS (whose father was Wroth's younger brother). She was probably writing her romance Urania about the time that Dorothy was born.
Occupation Lady Anne Clifford
LAC performed (with Lady Mary Wroth ) in Ben Jonson 's Masque of Beauty.
Katherine Acheson , editor of LAC 's early diaries, dates this performance 1609.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Ben Jonson
Spence, Richard T. Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery. Sutton Publishing.
20
Textual Features Margaret Cavendish
Her address to her husband rejoices that he has never bidden her to stop writing and work (that is do needlework) instead. In this connection she quotes from Lord Denny 's attempt to silence Lady Mary Wroth
Family and Intimate relationships W. H. Auden
Nicholas Jenkins of Stanford University formerly maintained on his website at http://www.stanford.edu/~njenkins/ a section called W. H. Auden. Family Ghosts, designed to show how Auden's family, despite his claims to ordinariness, sprang from a...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Lucy Aikin
LA was enough of a scholar to include information on the then little-known Lady Mary Wroth .

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