Folger Shakespeare Library
CELM

Elizabeth Weston

1581?–1612

Introduction

Elizabeth Jane Weston was a poet who lived much of her life at Prague and published volumes of Latin verse as well as her correspondence with European humanists. A Latin poem addressed to the reader has been independently added in manuscript to two known exempla of her Parthenica (WeE 1-2). Out of all her correspondence, one original letter by her, presumably autograph, is recorded as preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich (*WeE 3).

Abbreviations

Collected Writings
Elizabeth Jane Weston, Collected Writings, ed. and trans. Donald Cheney and Brenda M. Hosington, with D.K. Money (Toronto and Buffalo, 2000).

Verse

Ad Lectorem ('Omnia præsenti, Lector, quæcunque libello')

Twenty-four verses to the reader of Weston's Parthenica, subscribed Elisabetha Joanna, Vxor Joannis Leonis...Pragæ 16. Augusti Ao 1610. Collected Writings (2000), pp. 304-7, with a facing English translation (beginning Reader, in this present volume all works whatsoever).

WeE 1

Copy, in a neat roman hand, dated 16 August 1610, on a flyleaf.

In a printed exemplum of Weston's Parthenicôn...Libri III (Prague, [1608]), together with some Latin verses inscribed in probably the same hand in Liber I, sigs D2v-D3r: namely, two lines subscribed E. J. W.; four lines subscribed E. J. W.; and two lines subscribed E. D. WL.; a four-line Latin inscription on the last blank leaf of Liber III in possibly another hand.

c.1610

The poem Ad Lectorem edited from this MS in Collected Writings, with a complete facsimile on Plate 8 after p. xxxi.

WeE 2

Copy, dated 16 August 1610, on the flyleaf of a printed exemplum of Weston's Parthenicôn...Libri III (Prague, [1608]).

In the hand of Christoph Girsner (1552-1629), of Nuremberg, jurist, who has also added a few marginal comments in Latin in the printed text of the volume.

c.1610

Recorded in Collected Writings, and some of Girsner's marginal comments edited (with an English translation) on pp. 306-7.

Letters

Letter(s)

Collected Writings, pp. 330-1.

*WeE 3
Autograph

A probably autograph letter, in Latin, in a cursive italic hand, to Joseph Scaliger, 17 December 1602.

1602

Edited from this MS, with a translation into English, in Collected Writings, with a facsimile, Plate 9, after p. xxxi.

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich (Clm lat. 10383, f. 277)

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