The Lives and Afterlives of the Sidney Women Writers

The Lives and Afterlives of the Sidney Women Writers charts the multifarious connections between the lives and works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621), and Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth (1587-1651). Bringing together essays by renowned experts on the Sidney women and a new generation of scholars, the collection shows how the Sidney women did not so much write about their lives as they lived their lives through their texts, and continue to do so in contemporary reinventions of their lives and works. Engaging with contexts of place, race, literary traditions and aesthetics, including two new creative biofictional accounts, the essays offer dynamic, mutually illuminating perspectives, showing how literary texts and biography enlighten and complicate each other for mutual enrichment. The book’s specific illustrations of fluidity and porousness between the Sidney women’s lives and works offer precise, tailor-made interpretations of the varied circumstances which produced the Sidney women writers.