Our common ancestors - Sidney - Contents

Lady Mary Wroth

• References:
  • "Lady Mary Wroth" by Josephine A. Roberts, in Seventeenth-Century British Poets, ed. M. Thomas Hester, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol.121, Gale Research Inc, 1992.

• Sources yet to be consulted:
  • bibliography for Mary Wroth

Lady Mary Wroth (see here),
the writer,
born Lady Mary Sidney, 1586 or 1587, stayed often at her aunt's house Wilton,
mar 1604 (her age 17 or 18) to Sir Robert Wroth and had issue:

1. child, died age c.2 yrs.

it was an unhappy marriage, Sir Robert died 1614,
as a widow she went to stay with and had an affair with her 1st cousin, William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke [the real love of her life] and had illegitimate issue,

author of prose romance Urania, the first ever long fiction work by an English woman, pub 1621,
the full title, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, refers to Susan de Vere, wife of her 1st cousin the 1st Earl of Montgomery, future 4th Earl of Pembroke,
the title is in the style of her uncle's The countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which was dedicated to her aunt,
at the end of Urania is the sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus,
she died c.1652, age c.65 yrs.

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Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621) by Lady Mary Wroth.

Come merry Spring delight us,
For Winter long did spight us,
In pleasure still persever,
Thy beauties ending never:
Spring, and grow
Lasting so,
With joyes increasing ever.

Let cold from hence be banish'd,
Till hopes from me be vanish'd,
But blesse thy daynties growing
In fulnesse freely flowing:
Sweet Birds sing
For the Spring,
All mirth is now bestowing.

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• Luminarium
  • Lady Mary Wroth