Lady Mary Wroth

1587?–1651/3

Introduction

Lady Mary Wroth (née Sidney) was born into a highly literary family, being the daughter of the poet Robert Sidney and niece of Sir Philip Sidney and his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke. Lady Mary Wroth's mother, Barbara Sidney, née Gamage, was also a first cousin of Sir Walter Ralegh. Lady Mary's own literary circle included Ben Jonson, in certain of whose court masques she danced and who dedicated to her The Alchemist, and her cousin the poet William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, who was the father of the two children she bore following the death of her husband, Sir Robert Wroth, in 1614.

Literary Works

As an author, she has a claim to fame for writing the first known romance by an English woman. Inspired partly by her uncle's Arcadia, the first part of her Urania, although unfinished (ending in mid-sentence) was published in folio in 1621, and included, as an appendix, a sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, which is, again, the first of its genre to be written by an English woman. However, the hostile reaction her romance encountered, because it was seen to represent allegorically certain current aristocratic scandals, led to her trying to withdraw the book and to collect any exempla already sold. It also led to Wroth's withholding from the press the second part of Urania, which exists in her own autograph manuscript (*WrM 12) and which was not published until 1999.

Other notable works by Wroth were also confined to manuscript preservation. An earlier version of her sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, comprising 117 songs and sonnets instead of the 103 published in 1621, is preserved in her autograph manuscript (*WrM 1), and a play by her, Love's Victory, not published until 1988, is preserved in two autograph manuscripts (WrM 13-14). In addition, it is clear that some of the poems incorporated in Urania or in her sonnet sequence had a limited circulation in manuscripts, among her immediate family and social circle, though possibly a few copies extended more widely. A small number of extant individual texts recorded in CELM may bear witness to this extended circulation.

Letters

Otherwise Wroth has left behind a number of extant letters, mostly in her own distinctive italic hand, fourteen of which can currently be recorded, as well as four letters to her by correspondents (WrM 15-35). Notable among these is the vitriolic epistolary exchange, preserved largely in contemporary copies which evidently had some degree of circulation, between Wroth and her most hostile critic, Edward Denny (1569-1637), Baron Denny of Waltham and first Earl of Norwich, who took great offence at what he perceived in Urania to be a representation of a sexual scandal in his own family. These letters supplement their equally heated verse exchange (WrM 4-5, WrM 36-38).

Annotated Exempla of Urania

Finally, three recorded printed exempla of The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery's Urania bear readers' emendations, including two attempts to complete and cap the final unfinished sentence (WrM 9-11). These are included in Josephine Roberts's list (on pp. 663-4 of her edition in 1995) of a total of 29 extant printed exempla of the work that she could find, some of them bearing other annotations and ownership inscriptions.

Abbreviations

Pritchard: Lady Mary Wroth, Poems A Modernized Edition, ed. R.E. Pritchard (Keele, 1996).
Roberts, Poems: The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, ed. Josephine A. Roberts ([revised paperback edition], Baton Rouge and London, 1983).

Verse

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus ('When nights black mantle could most darknes prove')

A sonnet sequence of 103 poems and songs, first published in The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621). Edited (with additional poems in MS) in Roberts, Poems (1983), pp. 85-145. Pritchard, pp. 21-126.

*WrM 1

Autograph

Autograph fair copy of early versions of the sequence, with occasional revisions, comprising 102 of the 103 poems subsequently printed in 1621 (omitting Roberts's [P4], Forbeare darke night, my joyes now budd againe), together with six additional poems in the sequence not printed then; headed $ Pamphilia to Amphilanthus $.

Edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems, pp. 85-142, with a facsimile of f. 43r on p. 78. Facsimile of f. 43r also in DLB, vol. 121, Seventeenth-Century British Nondramatic Poets, First Series, ed. M. Thomas Hester (Detroit, 1992), p. 299. Facsimile of the first page in Heather Wolfe, The Pen's Excellencie: Treasures from the Manuscript Collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC, 2002), p. 125. Discussed, with reference to the use of $-fermés, in Heather Dubrow, And Thus Leave Off: Reevaluating Mary Wroth's Folger Manuscript, V.a.104, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 22 (2003), 273-91; in Susan Lauffer O' Hara, Reading the Stage Rubrics of Mary Wroth's Folger Manuscript of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, IV, ed. W. Speed Hill (Tempe, AZ, 2006), pp. 265-77; and, comparing the MS with the 1621 edition, in Ilona Bell, Mary Wroth's Revisions: Art or Cover-Up?, The Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies Newsletter, Spring 2008, pp. 13-16.

Autograph manuscript of poems by Lady Mary Wroth, in her stylish italic, iv + 65 quarto leaves, in modern black leather gilt.

Early 17th century

Later owned by Isaac Reed (1742-1807), literary editor and book collector; by Richard Heber (1774-1833), book collector; and by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt (1792-1872), book and manuscript collector (Phillipps MS 9283).

The Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.series, 100 through 199 (MS V.a.104 ff. 1r-63v passim)

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Song. 2. ('All night I weepe, all day I cry, Ay mee')

A shortened version of this song appears in Wit's Recreations (London, 1645). Roberts, Poems, [P14] (pp. 93-4). Pritchard, p. 35.

WrM 2

Copy, in a musical setting.

A quarto songbook, in a secretary and italic hand, 193 leaves (including ten blanks).

Compiled by Robert Taitt, schoolmaster and precenter in the Church of Lauder, Berwickshire.

c.1676-90

Later in the library of Charles Kay Ogden (1889-1957), psychologist, linguist and book collector. Formerly T 135Z. B724 1677-89 Bound.

Discussed in Walter H. Rubsamen, Scottish and English Music in the Renaissance in a Newly-Discovered Manuscript, Festschrift Heinrich Besseler (Leipzig, 1961), 259-84.

Clark Library, Los Angeles (MS. 1959. 003 Cantus 129: ff. 151, 148)

WrM 3

Copy of the shortened version of the song, untitled.

A folio formal verse miscellany, comprising c.406 poems, many of them song lyrics, in various neat hands, compiled probably over a period, 8 blank leaves (pp. [i-xvi]) + 10 unnumbered pages of poems (pp. [xvii-xxvi]) + 9 numbered pages (pp. 1-9) + ff. [9v]-151v + 12 leaves at the end blank but for a poem on the penultimate page (f. [11v]), in contemporary calf gilt.

Once erroneously associated with Thomas Killigrew (1612-83), whose hand does not appear in the volume.

Mid-17th century-c.1702

Inscribed (f. [ir]) S^r Robert Killigrew / 1702. Later in the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt (1792-1872), book and manuscript collector: Phillipps MS 9070. Sotheby's, 19 May 1897, lot 455.

Discussed, with a facsimile example, in Nancy Cutbirth, Thomas Killigrew's Commonplace Book?, Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin, NS No. 13 (1980), 31-8.

University of Texas at Austin (Ms (Killigrew, T) Works B Commonplace book f. 40v)

Railing Rimes Returned upon the Author by Mistress Mary Wrothe ('Hirmophradite in sense in Art a monster')

Twenty-six lines of verse, answering line-for-line Lord Denny's verse attack (WrM 36). First published in Josephine A. Roberts, An Unpublished Literary Quarrel concerning the Suppression of Mary Wroth's Urania (1621), N&Q, 222 (December 1977), 532-5.

WrM 4

Copy, headed To thy Lady Mary wroth for writeing the Countes of montgomerie Vrania, subscribed by the L. D.

A folio verse miscellany, 206 pages (plus blanks), rebound in 1832 (by Charles Lewis) with an independent miscellany (Huntington, HM 198, Part II).

Including 52 poems by Donne (many on pp. 64-109, 167-74 initialled L.C. [? Lord Chancellor], as are some poems by others), 11 poems by Carew, ten poems by Corbett, and 11 poems by or attributed to Herrick, in a single neat hand throughout; the poems dating up to 1637.

c.1637

Later scribbling and inscriptions including the names Edw Denny [presumably Edward Denny (1569-1637), Baron Denny of Waltham and first Earl of Norwich], Charles Cocks, Edward Randolphe and (on p. 162) Thomas Cassy. Later owned by Joseph Haslewood (1769-1833), bibliographer and antiquary (sold in the Haslewood sale, London, 1833, lot 1329, to Thorpe); by Edward King (1795-1837), Viscount Kingsborough, antiquary (his sale in Dublin, 1 November 1841, item 624); and by Henry Huth (1815-78), book collector (his library catalogue, 1880, IV, pp. 1159-64), and sold at Sotheby's, 17 July 1917 (Huth sale), lot 5873.

Cited in IELM, I.i (1980) and II.i (1987), as the Haslewood-Kingsborough MS (I): DnJ Δ 25, CwT Δ 28, CoR Δ 10, and HeR Δ 5. A complete microfilm is at the University of Birmingham, Shakespeare Institute (Mic S 15). Discussed in C.M. Armitage, Donne's Poems in Huntington Manuscript 198: New Light on The Funerall, SP, 63 (1966), 697-707. A facsimile of part of p. 63 in Marcy L. North, Amateur Compilers, Scribal Labour, and the Contents of Early Modern Poetic Miscellanies, EMS, 16 (2011), 82-111 (p. 101).

The Huntington Library, shelfmarks F through M (HM 198, Part I p. 164)

WrM 5

Copy of Wroth's verse response to Denny's poem, in a mixed hand, in a pair of conjugate folio leaves of verse.

c.1622

Edited from this MS in Roberts, N&Q, 222 (1977), 534.

University of Nottingham (Cl LM 85/3 (ii))

'Sweete solitarines, joy to those hearts'

First published in The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621). The First Part of the Countesse of Montgomeries Urania, ed. Josephine A. Roberts (Binghamton, NY, 1995), pp. 133-4. Roberts, Poems, [U9] (pp. 151-3). Pritchard, pp. 135-7.

WrM 6

Copy of an early version, apparently in the hand of George Garrard, headed Penshurst Mount.

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 153.

A folio composite volume of miscellaneous papers in verse and prose, in various hands and paper sizes, 170 leaves, mounted on guards, in modern half-morocco.

Including eleven poems by John Donne, three of them (ff. 10r-14v, 55r, 76r-7r) in the italic hand of his friend Sir Henry Goodyer (1571-1627); ff. 95r-8r in the same hand as the Leconfield MS (DnJ Δ 5) and constituting part of what was probably a quarto MS book of Donne's satires; f. 132r-v constituting a set of six verse epistles by Donne, the text related to the Westmoreland MS (DnJ Δ 19).

Early-mid-17th century

From the Conway Papers belonging chiefly to Sir Edward Conway, Baron Conway of Ragley, later Viscount Killultagh and Viscount Conway of Conway Castle (c.1564-1631), and to his son, Edward, second Viscount Conway (1594-1655). Later owned by John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), politician and writer, and presented 10 January 1860.

Cited in IELM, I.i, as the Conway MS: DnJ Δ 40. Cited as A23 by editors. Facsimile of f. 62r in Michael Roy Denbo, Editing a Renaissance Commonplace Book: The Holgate Miscellany, in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, III, ed. W. Speed Hill (Tempe, AZ, 2004). pp. 65-73 (p. 71).

The British Library: Additional MSS, numbers 20000 through 24999 (Add. MS 23229 ff. 91r-2v)

'Was I to blame to trust'

Verses in The Second Part of the Countesse of Montgomery's Urania, ed. Roberts, et al. (Tempe, Arizona, 1999), p. 137. Roberts, Poems, [N14] (pp. 205-6). Pritchard, pp. 215-16.

WrM 7

Copy, in a hand similar to that of Sir Henry Goodyer (1571-1627), untitled.

National Archives, Kew (SP 14/115/34*^v)

Verse and Prose

The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery's Urania

First published as The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621). Edited by Josephine A. Roberts, as The First Part of the Countesse of Montgomeries Urania (Binghamton, NY, 1995). Poems alone edited in Roberts, Poems, and in Pritchard, pp. 127-99.

*WrM 8

Autograph

Autograph fair copy of early versions of nine of the poems subsequently printed in the 1621 Urania.

Edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems (U12-14, U17-18, U24, U32, U34, and U52, on pp. 154-9, 163-4, 170-2, 183-92).

Autograph manuscript of poems by Lady Mary Wroth, in her stylish italic, iv + 65 quarto leaves, in modern black leather gilt.

Early 17th century

The Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.series, 100 through 199 (MS V.a.104 ff. 31r, 33v, 34v, 42r, 49v, 55r, 57r, 64r-5r)

WrM 9

Exemplum of The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621) with a three-line MS verse conclusion to the work, following the final incomplete printed sentence And, added in pencil in an unidentified hand.

Early-mid-17th century

The MS conclusion edited in Renée Pigeon, Manuscript Notations in an Unrecorded Copy of Lady Mary Wroth's The Countess of Mountgomeries Urania (1621), N&Q, 236 (March 1991), 81-2.

Library of Congress (PZ3. W946 English Print)

*WrM 10

Autograph

Autograph corrections and revisions by Mary Wroth to the printed text, in an exemplum of The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621).

c.1621

Later owned by Hugh McDonald (his inscriptions (Dublin, 12 May 1784 and 1783); by Fitz Edward Hall (DCL at Oxford 1860); and by W.B. Chorley. Sold in 1948 by the bookseller Howard C. Howe, Waukegan, Illinois.

These authorial alterations are discussed and all incorporated in Josephine Roberts's edition, where a facsimile of sig. 3Y1^r-v appears on p. cxvii.

Private owners in the UK (Urania)

WrM 11

A printed exemplum of The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621) with manuscript annotations and additions, notably an eight-line conclusion to the work, in an unidentified cursive predominantly italic hand.

c.1620s

Inscribed names of Mary Plumbley 1663 and R. de Milles. Acquired in 1933 from Stevens and Brown Ltd, London.

The MS conclusion edited in Renée Pigeon, Manuscript Notations in an Unrecorded Copy of Lady Mary Wroth's The Countess of Mountgomeries Urania (1621), N&Q, 236 (March 1991), 81-2. Discussed, with facsimiles, in Susan Light, Reading Romances: The Handwritten Ending of Mary Wroth's Urania in the UCLA Library Copy, Sidney Newsletter & Journal, 14/1 (Summer 1996), 66-72.

University of California at Los Angeles (SRLF PR 2399 W94u 1621)

The Second Part of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania

Edited by Josephine Roberts; completed by Suzanne Gossett and Janel Mueller (Tempe, Arizona, 1999). Poems alone edited in Roberts, Poems, and in Pritchard, pp. 200-20.

*WrM 12 1621

Autograph

Autograph manuscript, closely written in her italic hand with frequent revisions, comprising two books in two folio volumes, the first untitled but with the colophon heer ends the first booke, of the secound part of the Countess of Mountgomeries Vrania, the second volume headed The secound booke of the secound part of the Countess of Montgomerys Vrania, the pages numbered by Wroth according to bifolium (so each of her foll numbers represents four pages), the first volume 67 leaves (plus blanks), the second volume 62 leaves (plus blanks), both in later half-calf marbled boards.

Edited from this MS in Roberts's edition, with facsimiles of Vol. I, ff. 1r, 15r, 35r, and Vol. II, ff. 1r, 22r, and 62r, after p. xliv. Facsimile of Vol. I, f. 1r also in Roberts, Poems, p. 81, and facsimile examples in Carolyn Ruth Swift, Feminine Identity in Lady Mary Wroth's Romance Urania, in Women in the Renaissance, ed. Kirby Farrell, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Arthur F. Kinney (Amherst, 1988), 154-174 (pp. 156-7).

Autograph MS of the Second Part of Lady Mary Wroth's Urania, in two folio volumes.

1621

Inscribed inside the front cover of Vol. I Charles Morgan.

Newberry Library, Chicago (Case MS fY 1565. W95 The MS as a whle)

Dramatic Works

Love's Victory

Play including songs and verse. Extracts edited in James O. Halliwell, A Brief Description of the Ancient and Modern Manuscripts Preserved in the Public Library, Plymouth (London, 1853), pp. 212-36. Edited in full in Lady Mary Wroth's Loves Victory The Penshurst Manuscript, ed. Michael G. Brennan (Roxburgh Club, London, 1988[=1990]).

*WrM 13

Autograph

Autograph MS, almost entirely in Wroth's formal italic hand, 49 quarto leaves, in contemporary dark red morocco gilt.

Probably copied from the Huntington MS (WrM 14).

c.1620

A complete facsimile of this MS, with transcription, in Brennan's edition. Illustration of the cover in Josephine A. Roberts, Deciphering Women's Pastoral: Coded Language in Wroth's Loves's Victory, in Representing Women in Renaissance England, ed. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia & London, 1997), pp. 163-74 (p. 166).

The Viscount De L'Isle, Penshurst Place ([no shelfmark])

*WrM 14

Autograph

Autograph MS, on 21 folio and quarto leaves, in vellum boards.

A working MS in alternating formal and cursive styles of hand and differing shades of ink, entitled Loues victorie, with numerous autograph deletions, revisions and additions, incomplete and imperfect, lacking various lines including the opening of Act I and the last part of Act V.

Early 17th century

Probably the original MS. in the possession of Sir E. Dering, Bart. 4to recorded by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-89) in 1853. Quaritch's sale catalogue, December 1899, item 1116. Owned in 1901 by William Augustus White (1843-1927), American banker and collector. Purchased from A.S.W. Rosenbach (1876-1952), Philadelphia bookseller and scholar, 6 September 1923.

Extracts (538 lines) were edited by Halliwell possibly from a (now lost) transcript of this MS made by his wife in 1845, and this later transcript may be the MS 102 recorded as being once in the Plymouth Proprietory Library. Differing arguments for provenance are presented in Josephine A. Roberts, The Huntington Manuscript of Lady Mary Wroth's Play, Love's Victorie, HLQ, 46 (1983), 156-74; in Brennan's edition, pp. 17-20; and in two articles by Arthur Freeman: a review of Brennan's edition in The Library, 6th Ser. 13 (1991), 168-73, and Love's Victory: A Supplementary Note, The Library, 6th Ser. 19 (1997), 252-4.

The MS is discussed also in Josephine Roberts, The Huntington Manuscript of Lady Mary Wroth's Play, Loves Victorie, HLQ, 46 (1983), 156-74, and the songs edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems, pp. 210-15.

Facsimile examples of ff. 1r and 5r in Roberts, HLQ, 46, pp. 157 and 160; in Roberts, Poems, pp. 79-80; Facsimile of f. 43r also in DLB, vol. 121, Seventeenth-Century British Nondramatic Poets, First Series, ed. M. Thomas Hester (Detroit, 1992), pp. 305-6; of f. 1r in Margaret Anne McLaren, An Unknown Continent: Lady Mary Wroth's Forgotten Pastoral Drama, Loves Victorie, in The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print & Counterbalancing the Canon, ed. Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky (Amherst, MA, 1990), pp. 276-94 (p. 277); and facsimiles, with transcriptions, of ff. 1r and 20v in Reading Early Modern Women, ed. Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer (New York & London, 2004), pp. 422-5.

The Huntington Library, shelfmarks F through M (HM 600)

Correspondence

Letter(s)

*WrM 15

Autograph

Autograph letter signed, to Queen Anne, from Baynards Castle, 25 April [c.1608].

c.1608

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 233-4 (No. I).

The Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House (Cecil Papers 130/174)

*WrM 16

Autograph

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to Sir Robert Sidney, from Loughton, 19 March 1613[/14.

1614

Edited, with facsimiles, in Margaret J. Arnold's articles Editing a Recent Mary Wroth Letter, in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, III, ed. W. Speed Hill (Tempe, AZ, 2004). pp. 103-14, and An Unpublished Letter of Mary Wroth, ELR, 35/3 (Autumn 2005), 454-8.

University of Kansas (MS Crawford 177)

*WrM 17

Autograph

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to her father Sir Robert Sidney, from Penshurst, 17 October 1614.

1614

Among papers of the Sidney family, Viscounts De L'Isle, of Penshurst Place, Ashford, Kent.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 234-5 (No. II).

Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone (U1475 C52)

*WrM 18

Autograph

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to Sir Dudley Carleton, Baynards Castle, 19 April [1619]. 1619.

1619

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 235 (No. III).

National Archives, Kew (SP 14/108/56)

*WrM 19

Autograph

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to Sir Dudley Carleton, from Baynard's Castle, 25 April [1619].

1619

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 235-6 (No. IV).

National Archives, Kew (SP 14/108/73)

*WrM 20 1621

Autograph

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, 15 December 1621.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 236 (No. V), with a complete facsimile on p. 77. Facsimile examples also in Josephine A. Roberts, The Huntington Manuscript of Lady Mary Wroth's Play, Love's Victorie, HLQ, 46 (1983), 156-74 (pp. 157, 159).

A large folio composite volume of state letters, in various hands and paper sizes, 393 leaves, in 19th-century morocco gilt.

Collected by the Hon. George Matthew Fortescue.

Bodleian Library, other MSS (MS Add. D. 111 ff. 174r-5r)

WrM 21

Copy, in an undentified hand, of a letter by Wroth to Sir Edward Denny, 15 February [1621/2].

c.1621

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 237 (No. VI).

The Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House (Cecil Papers 130/117)

WrM 22

Copy of a letter by Wroth to Sir Edward Denny, in a neat secretary hand, 15 February [1621/2].

c.1622

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 237.

University of Nottingham (Cl LM 85/2)

WrM 23

Copy of a letter by Wroth to Sir Edward Denny, in a mixed hand, here dated 21 February 1621/2.

c.1622

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 240.

University of Nottingham (Cl LM 85/4)

WrM 24

Copy (possibly autograph) of a letter by Sir Edward Denny, to Lady Mary Wroth, 26 February 1621/2.

1622

Edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems, pp. 238-9.

The Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House (Cecil Papers 130/118-19)

WrM 25

Copy of a letter by Sir Edward Denny, to Lady Mary Wroth, in a neat secretary hand, 26 February 1621/2.

c.1622

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 238.

University of Nottingham (Cl LM 85/1)

WrM 26

Copy, in an unidentified hand, of a letter by Sir Edward Denny to Lady Mary Wroth, 26 February 1621/2.

c.1622

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 238.

Warwickshire County Record Office (CR 2017/C48/2(a))

WrM 27

Copy, in an unidentified hand (with ? an autograph signature), of a letter by Wroth to Sir Edward Denny, 27 February 1621/2.

With a copy of a letter apparently by Denny to Wroth.

1622

Among papers of the Feilding family, Earls of Denbigh, of Pailton House, Warwickshire.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 240-1 (No. VIII).

Warwickshire County Record Office (CR 2017/C48/2(b))

WrM 28

Copy of a letter by Sir Edward Denny to Lady Mary Wroth, [February-March 1621/2].

Edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems, pp. 240-1 (No. IX).

Warwickshire County Record Office (CR 2017/C48/2(c))

WrM 29

Copy, in an unidentified hand, of a letter by Wroth to Sir William Feilding, first Earl of Denbigh, [March 1621/2].

c.1622

Among papers of the Feilding family, Earls of Denbigh, of Pailton House, Warwickshire.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 242 (No. X).

Warwickshire County Record Office (CR 2017/C48/2)

WrM 30

Copy of a letter by Sir Edward Denny to Lady Mary Wroth, [February-March 1621/2].

c.1622

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 241.

The Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House (Cecil Papers 130/121)

WrM 31

Copy of a letter by Sir Edward Denny to Lady Mary Wroth, in a mixed hand, [February-March 1621/2].

c.1622

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 241.

University of Nottingham (Cl LM 85/5)

*WrM 32 1623

Autograph

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to Sir Edward Conway, from Loughton, 7 March [1622/3].

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 242-3 (No. XI). Facsimile example also in Josephine A. Roberts, The Huntington Manuscript of Lady Mary Wroth's Play, Love's Victorie, HLQ, 46 (1983), 156-74 (p. 158).

A folio guard-book of independent Jacobean state papers, stamped foliation 1-179.

National Archives, Kew (SP 14/139 item 53)

*WrM 33

Autograph

Autograph letter signed, to Sir Edward Conway, from Loughton, 30 January [1623/4].

1624

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 243-4 (No. XII).

National Archives, Kew (SP 14/158/65)

WrM 34

Draft of a letter by Sir Edward Conway, to Lady Mary Wroth, 27 September 1624.

1624

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 244.

National Archives, Kew (SP 14/172/59)

WrM 35 1640

An autograph letter signed by Sir George Manners, to Lady Mary Wroth, asking to read her manuscript of [Part two of] Urania, 31 May 1640.

Recorded in HMC, 12th Report, Appendix, Part IV, Rutland, Vol. I (1888), p. 520. Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 244-5.

Letterbook of Sir George Manners.

The Duke of Rutland, Belvoir Castle (Letterbook of Sir George Manners f. 132r)

Miscellaneous

To Pamphilla from the father-in-law of Seralius ('Hermophradite in show, in deed a monster')

Twenty-six lines of verse by Lord Denny fiercely attacking Wroth's published romance and prompting her verse retaliation (WrM 4). First published in Josephine A. Roberts, An Unpublished Literary Quarrel concerning the Suppression of Mary Wroth's Urania (1621), N&Q, 222 (December 1977), 532-5.

WrM 36

Copy.

An octavo verse miscellany, in a single neat predominantly italic hand, 72 leaves, in old leather.

Probably compiled by one H.S., a Cambridge man.

c.1640s-50s

Later owned by the Rev. Philip Bliss (1787-1857), antiquary and book collector, with his bookplate and inscription 1806 Purchased of Lansdown of Bristol. Bliss sale, 21 August 1858, lot 192.

The British Library: Additional MSS, numbers 20000 through 24999 (Add. MS 22603 f. 64v)

WrM 37

Copy of Denny's poem attacking Wroth's Urania, chiefly in a mixed hand, the last two lines possibly squeezed in in another hand, in a pair of conjugate folio leaves of verse.

c.1622

Edited from this MS in Roberts, N&Q, 222 (1977), 533-4.

University of Nottingham (Cl LM 85/3 (i))

WrM 38

Copy.

An octavo verse miscellany, including 13 poems by or attributed to Herrick, almost entirely in a single small predominantly italic hand, 250 pages (plus numerous blanks), originally in contemporary calf, but now disbound.

Inscribed four times on a flyleaf Tobias Alston his booke: i.e. probably Tobias Alston (1620-c.1639) of Sayham Hall, near Sudbury, Suffolk. His half-brother Edward (b.1598) was a contemporary of Herrick at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, while his cousin, Edward Alston, later President of the College of Physicians, was a contemporary of Herrick at St John's College, Cambridge, some of the other contents also relating to Cambridge, besides some relating to Suffolk. The date 1639 occurs on p. 241, and pp. 243-50 contains verses written in two later hands (to c.1728) and some prose pieces written from the reverse end.

c.1639 [-c.1728]

Names inscribed on a flyleaf including Henry Glisson (later Fellow of the College of Physicians); Thomas Avral(?); Horace Norton; Henry Rich; and James Tavor (Registrar of Cambridge University). Later owned by one John Whitehead, and by Dr Mary Pickford. Sotheby's, 27 June 1972, lot 309.

Cited in IELM, II.i (1987), as the Alston MS: HeR Δ 7. A complete set of photocopies of the MS is in the British Library, RP 772. Facsimile of pp. 6-7 in Sotheby's sale catalogue (see HeR 176, HeR 405) where the MS is described at some length. See also letters by Peter Beal and Donald W. Foster in TLS (24 January 1986), pp. 87-8.

Yale, Osborn MS b 150 through Osborn MS b 199 (Osborn MS b 197 p. 117)