ABSTRACT
Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth, one of the great line of Sidney writers, was the author of three major works: Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, the first substantial collection of secular poems written and published by an englishwoman; The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, the first prose romance by an english woman (Hackett ARC 2:8); and Love’s Victory, the second drama by an englishwoman (Findlay ARC 2:13). She was born on 18 October 1587, the daughter of Barbara gamage and Robert Sidney, himself the author of a substantial collection of manuscript poems (Moore ARC 2:15). Her celebrated uncle, Sir Philip Sidney, died a year and a day before her birth, but his sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella and romance The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia had an important influence on his niece’s writing (Sokolov ARC 2:14; Borris ARC 2:6). His sister, collaborator, and editor, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, a path-breaking poet, translator, and patron, was the younger Mary Sidney’s godmother, namesake, and literary inspiration (Hannay, “‘your Vertuous and Learned Aunt’”; Hannay ARC 1:8). The countess’s eldest son, William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, a powerful courtier, manuscript poet, and the most important patron of the Jacobean era (Brennan, Literary Patronage), was the love of Wroth’s life and the model for Amphilanthus, the addressee of her sonnet sequence and the hero of her romance (Roberts, “Biographical Problem”; Lamb, “‘Can you suspect’”; Lamb ARC 2:17). Surrounded and nurtured by a family of brilliant writers and highly educated, discriminating readers, both male and female, Wroth had a literary heritage and live audience close at hand.
