The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth

Although her poems are little know today, Lady Mary Wroth was one of the most accomplished women writers of the English Renaissance.Her poems were circulated among many of the leading authors of her time, including Ben Johnson, who praised her work for its profound understanding of the nature of romantic love.Lady Mary's sonnet cycle, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, was the first English sequence to be written from a women's perspective.The Countesse of Montgomery's Urania, her romance interspersed with poetry, was one of the first works of prose fiction to be composed by an Englishwoman. In this complete edition of Lady Mary Wroth's verse, Josephine Roberts has brought together and annotated all 192 of the surviving poems, many of which have never been published before.As the eldest daughter of Sir Robert Sidney and Lady Barbara Gamage, Lady Mary took great pride in the Sidney literary heritage.During the years of her marriage she assumed the roles of both poet and patron, an example set f