ABSTRACT
But as Hannay further observes in the same passage, Mary Sidney also “stands in a liminal position between scribal publication and print.” Her most important work, the last 107 verse paraphrases of The Psalmes of David, remained in manuscript, and the number of surviving copies, currently eighteen, continues to grow. The metrical Psalter was begun by Philip Sidney, who lived to compose only the first forty-three paraphrases; it was completed by his sister some time in the last decade or so of the sixteenth century. it was not until the early nineteenth century that the first complete printing of the poems appeared. Thus, Mary Sidney continued to participate in early modern manuscript culture while she was ignoring both the restrictions of gender and the supposed “stigma of print” for writers of her class. it is very likely that additional manuscript copies of her other literary works were simply lost or destroyed. in the case of the Psalmes, however, the evidence is clear. That work was still being transmitted in manuscript into the eighteenth century, no doubt partly because of continuing fascination with the more famous Philip Sidney, although readers were aware that the paraphrases were a collaborative effort. Revival of interest in the poems in the 1960s has led to a growing number of studies of the manuscripts. The following survey of that scholarly attention covers the manuscript circulation of the Psalmes, printed editions,
questions of dating, Mary Sidney’s apparent reluctance to have the poems printed, and the relevance of material features of manuscript to the text.
