Donald Cheney – författare

This volume contains the work of the only two Renaissance Englishwomen known to have published collections (as opposed to compilations) of their Latin poetry. Elizabeth Jane Weston lived in Prague as a child, her stepfather being alchemist to Rudolph II. Her stepfather''s disgrace, imprisonment and death in 1597 left her to try and support her destitute family household with her writing. Her facility at Latin verses and the support of Georg Martinius von Baldhoven quickly led her to international fame. For Poemata we reprint here the copy of the 1602 edition owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library and for Parthenica we reprint the copy of the 1608(?) edition owned by the Houghton Library. Bathsua Reginald (Makin) was the daughter of Henry Reginald, a London school-master. She is said to have been fluent in Greek, Latin and French and to have knowledge also of Hebrew and Syriac. Her Musa virginea Græco-Latino-Gallica of 1616 certainly confirm these claims to have been accurate. She later became tutor to Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I. The work for which she is best known today is An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen published in 1673. The work reproduced here is the 1616 edition of Musa virginea and as an appendix we also reprint an engraved card showing specimens of script.

This volume contains the work of the only two Renaissance Englishwomen known to have published collections (as opposed to compilations) of their Latin poetry. Elizabeth Jane Weston lived in Prague as a child, her stepfather being alchemist to Rudolph II. Her stepfather''s disgrace, imprisonment and death in 1597 left her to try and support her destitute family household with her writing. Her facility at Latin verses and the support of Georg Martinius von Baldhoven quickly led her to international fame. For Poemata we reprint here the copy of the 1602 edition owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library and for Parthenica we reprint the copy of the 1608(?) edition owned by the Houghton Library. Bathsua Reginald (Makin) was the daughter of Henry Reginald, a London school-master. She is said to have been fluent in Greek, Latin and French and to have knowledge also of Hebrew and Syriac. Her Musa virginea Græco-Latino-Gallica of 1616 certainly confirm these claims to have been accurate. She later became tutor to Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I. The work for which she is best known today is An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen published in 1673. The work reproduced here is the 1616 edition of Musa virginea and as an appendix we also reprint an engraved card showing specimens of script.

This is the first modern edition and translation of the writings of the Neo-Latin poet Elizabeth Jane Weston (c. 1581-1612), the stepdaughter of Edward Kelley, court alchemist of Rudolf II in Prague. Turning to the composition of Latin poems as a means of seeking financial support for herself and her family after Kelley's disgrace and death, Weston became widely celebrated as the 'Virgo Angla' and was held in high esteem in the international republic of letters of her time. This collection of poems and letters written by her, to her, and, occasionally, about her, sheds new light on the possibilities of artistic self-representation available to women at the end of the sixteenth century. The core of the edition (which contains the Latin text along with a facing-page English translation) is Weston's Parthenica (c. 1608), supplemented by a wide range of individual poems found in various European libraries.The editors have identified proper names and allusions where possible, while leaving to others the task of evaluating Weston's achievement.Readers of this edition will be fascinated by the evidence of a woman whose orphaned state seems to have enabled her to write freely and to be praised and published to a degree denied women under the tutelage of father or husband. This edition should be an indispensable part of the growing library of women writers in the early modern period.Winner of the Josephine Roberts Award, presented by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women

Since its appearance in 1990, The Spenser Encyclopedia has become the reference book for scholarship on Edmund Spenser (1552-99), offering a detailed, literary guide to his life, works, and influence. Comprehensive in scope and international in outlook, the encyclopedia contains some 700 entries by 422 contributors in 20 countries. An index provides access to material not obvious at first glance through the main body of the book, and all works cited more than once in the encyclopedia are included in an extensive bibliography. A brief historical preface and a guide to using the encyclopedia are included. This paperback edition brings this tool within range of all Spenser scholars.