Folger Shakespeare Library
CELM

Elizabeth Melville

fl.1599-1631

Introduction

Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross, is known for her long religious poem Ane Godlie Dreame, which was first published in 1603 and whose subsequent popularity is witnessed by the numerous reprints throughout the century, two of which were even copied by hand in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (MeE 1-2). Another notable poem by her, which was copied later, relates to the minister John Welsh who was imprisoned and condemned to death in 1605 before being banished (MeE 3). Otherwise Melville is represented in manuscripts by eleven recorded autograph letters (*MeE 4).

Verse

Ane Godlie Dreame ('Upon ane day as I did mourne full soir')

First published in Edinburgh, 1603.

MeE 2 Early 18th century

Copy, headed A Godly Dream, compyled by Elizabeth Melvill, Lady Culross, Younger, at the request of a friend...1686.

A quarto volume comprising four tracts, 78 leaves.

A Sonnet sent To Blackness To Mr John Welsh By ye Lady Culross ('My Dear Brother wt courage Bear ye crosse')

First published in Early Metrical Tales, ed. David Laing (London, 1826). Kissing the Rod, ed. Germaine Greer et al. (New York, 1988), pp. 33-4. Sixteenth-Century British Non-Dramatic Works, ed. D. Richardson (London, 1996), p. 169.

MeE 3 1715

Copy in Wodrow's hand, dated on f. 10r 1605 or 1606, copied on a blank page of a letter addressed to him, on two conjugate octavo leaves, dated 30 November 1715.

Edited from this MS by editors.

A quarto composite volume of verse and prose, in various largely secretary hands, one predominating, 269 leaves, in modern quarter-calf on marbled boards.

Among the working papers and collections of Robert Wodrow (1679-1734), ecclesiastical historian.

National Library of Scotland, other MSS (MS Wod. Qu. XXIX f. 11r)

Letters

Letter(s)
*MeE 4
Autograph

A quarto composite volume, comprising eleven autograph letters signed by Elizabeth Melville, in her small italic hand, on pages of various size, with address panels and traces of red wax seals, iii + 19 leaves, in 19th-century calf gilt.

Written to the Presbyterian minister John Livingstone (8), to her son James (2) and to the Countess of Wigton (1).

c.1625-31

Inscribed (f. [iv]) Chas: Kirkpatrick Sharpe, with a title-page by him (f. [iir]) dated 1826, and inscribed by Laing (f. [iv]) David Laing Novr 1851 / This Volume presented to me by Mrs Bedford, Sister to the late Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Esqr.

Contents