This volume contains the work of the only two Renaissance Englishwomen known to have published collections (as opposed to compilations) of their Latin poetry. Elizabeth Jane Weston lived in Prague as a child, her stepfather being alchemist to Rudolph II. Her stepfather's disgrace, imprisonment and death in 1597 left her to try and support her destitute family household with her writing. Her facility at Latin verses and the support of Georg Martinius von Baldhoven quickly led her to international fame. For Poemata we reprint here the copy of the 1602 edition owned by the Folger Shakespeare...

At a time when England was an officially Protestant country to translate Catholic works, thereby helping to propagate the faith, was a brave act and to actually identify oneself in print, as did Cary, as ’a Catholique, and a woman’ was a risky assertion of political opposition. One of Cary’s daughters asserts that Cary’s translation of Cardinal Du Perron’s Reply was largely motivated by a desire to convert scholars at Oxford and Cambridge. With her translation in 1630 she sought to reactivate a polemical war which had peaked in 1616 and she intervened in political debate that was...

Anne Cooke Bacon was highly educated and was known for her ability to read Latin, Greek, Italian and French. She married Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen’s Keeper of the Great Seal and a member of Elizabeth’s Privy Council. The directions of the new Church of England were heavily influenced by her husband and Anne too was actively involved in the religious controversies of her day, her translations position her as a strong advocate for the Protestant cause. Whilst in her early 20s she translated the sermons of Bernardino Ochino, a popular Italian preacher who converted to Calvinism. Her...

The dates of Mary Fage are not known, it is assumed however that she was flourishing around 1637. Fames Roule comprises a series of over 400 acrostic verses, each containing an anagram and each addressed to one of the noble and powerful of Caroline England. As such it constitutes a verbal salute to court culture. While they may not be of great literary value, her verses are an extreme example of the pervasive word play of her time, and their contents afford an extended glimpse at social construction of upperclass reality in Caroline England. Reproduced here is the copy held at the Huntington...

The two translators whose printed works are contained in this volume were the daughters of Henry VIII. Whilst they both suffered from their father's changes of wives and faiths, after his marriage in 1543 to Katherine Parr they both benefited from their new stepmother's kindness. In different ways, she was involved in the production of the texts contained in this volume. When Princess Elizabeth was eleven she began to translate Le Mirroir de l'âme pécheresse (1531), a verse meditation by Marguerite of Angoulême, sister of King Francis I of France. The Princess dedicated it to...

Few facts are known about Catholic recusant Jane Owen. The title page of this, her only work, tells us that in 1634 when this volume was published at St Omer, she was already deceased. However, she was necessarily still living after 1617 when the treatise of Bellarmine, which she here partially translates and comments on, De Gemitu Columbae, was first published. It seems likely that she spent most of her life in England but later lived in exile on the Continent, possibly returning regularly to collect alms for poverty stricken English recusants abroad. Her simple prose gives us unique...

Despite the fame their work brought them, and despite the importance of their parents in mid-Tudor England, relatively little is known of the lives of Anne, Margaret and Jane Seymour - daughters of Anne Stanhope and the Duke of Somerset. In 1550, aged roughly eighteen, sixteen and nine, these three noblewomen composed a Latin poem of 104 distichs on the death of Marguerite de Navarre, which they sent to their former tutor, Nicolas Denisot, now living in Paris. Entitled Annae, Margaritae, Janae, Sororum virginum heroidum anglarum, in mortem Divae Margaritae Valesiae, navarrorum Reginae,...

As writers strongly committed to the Reformation, Anne Lock Prowse and Elizabeth Russell translated works which they believed were doctrinally useful for their Protestant readers. Lock translated Calvin’s four sermons from French, dedicating the work to Katharine, Duchess of Suffolk. These were published with the appended sonnet sequence A meditation of a penitent sinner. This appears to be the first sonnet sequence written in English. The present edition is a facsimile of the Folger Shakespeare Library copy of 1560. Of the markes of the children of God, and of their comforts in afflictions...

Printed Writings 1500-1640, Series I, Part Two consists of thirteen volumes of writings by and about early modern Englishwomen. The set comprises the following titles: Volume 1: Anne Cooke Bacon Volume 2: Brief Confessional Writings: Grey, Stubbes, Livingstone, Clarksone Volume 3: Eleanor Davies Volume 4: Early Tudor Translators: Margaret Beaufort, Margaret More Roper and Mary Basset Volume 5: Elizabeth and Mary Tudor Volume 6: Anne, Margaret and Jane Seymour Volume 7: Neo-Latin Women Writers: Elizabeth Jane Weston and Bathsua Reginald (Makin) Volume 8: Mother's Advice Books Volume 9: Jane...