Lady Mary Wroth, Author and Courtier

 By Lauren Gilbert

Lady Mary Wroth c 1620

Born Mary Sidney, she was the daughter of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester & Viscount de L’Isle and his wife Barbara Gamage, a Welsh heiress. She was born about 1587 (possibly October 18) possibly in Penshurst Place in Kent or in Baynard’s Castle, London (the Sidney family’s London headquarters). Robert Sidney was the younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney and Lady Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. Robert Sidney was also a poet. He was appointed Governor of Flushing, the Netherlands, in 1588, where his wife and daughter Mary accompanied him. A brother, William, was born there. When she couldn’t accompany her parents, Mary was in the household of the Countess of Pembroke for much of her childhood.

Out of eleven pregnancies, Lord and Lady Leicester had six surviving children including Mary, and seemed to have an affectionate family unit. When at home together, the children had a tutor, who apparently gave the children a good education. When staying in the household of her aunt, the Countess of Pembroke, Mary shared her cousins’ tutor. She was known to have talent for writing, playing the virginals and dancing. In 1602, Mary danced at court, before Queen Elizabeth, whose reign would end at her death the next year.

When James I succeeded in 1603, he appointed Lord Leicester as Lord Chamberlain of Queen Anne’s household. His increased status put Mary, now about fifteen or sixteen years old, in a position to attend court as one of Queen Anne’s attendants. Mary was married in 1604, at about age seventeen to Sir Robert Wroth, who at about age twenty-seven, was about ten years older. He was a wealthy landowner and one of the king’s many hunting companions. He had been knighted in 1603. In 1613, he was chosen to be sheriff of Essex.

There are suggestions that the couple was unhappy, possibly an arranged or forced marriage. There were rumours of incompatibility early on. There are also suggestions that he was a profligate spender and womaniser. Lord Wroth inherited Loughton House and Durrants in Essex from his father c. 1605-1606. (Loughton House was a family home, and Durrants a hunting lodge.) Lady Wroth continued to attend court after her marriage, although she was not a member of the Queen’s household, and acted at Whitehall in one of Ben Jonson’s masques, The Masque of Blackness” on Twelfth Night 1605. This introduced her into literary society.

Lord and Lady Wroth had one child, a son named James, born in February 1613 or 1614, after about ten years of marriage, suggesting a possible rapprochement. Lord Wroth died March 14, 1614. She was left a widow with a very young child, a jointure of 1200 pounds per year (about $320,220.00 USD today), and debts totaling 23,000 pounds (approximately $6,138,000.00 USD today). Although there were three trustees involved, it appears she managed her estates herself, and wasn’t very good at it. She lived primarily at Loughton House, a widow the last forty years of her life. Sadly, little James died in July 1616, which resulted in Lady Wroth’s losing many of her rights as widow regarding her late husband’s estates.

As with many court ladies, there were rumours about Lady Wroth. One was a rumoured affair with Ben Jonson, for which there seems to be no evidence, so that is likely untrue. (He dedicated his play The Alchemist to her in 1612. He also wrote a sonnet, “A Sonnet to the Noble Lady, The Lady Mary Wroth,” which was not published until after his death, and was known to seek and receive patronage from Lady Wroth’s mother as well as Lady Wroth.) It is worth noting that Jonson was not the only poet to write poetry to her.

Lady Wroth did have an affair with her cousin, William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (1580-1630). He was her first cousin (son of Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke). When children, Lady Wroth and her cousin were close, and there is an indication that they may have been more than friends. Lord Pembroke was a wealthy and powerful courtier (even though he was not a favourite of King James). He was also a poet in his own right-his poems were collected and published by John Donne.

It is not known when Mary and William became lovers (there is an implication that the affair began while her husband was still living). Whenever it started, their affair lasted until the mid-1620’s. Lady Wroth had two children by William: a son William who died in the 1640s fighting as a Royalist in the English civil war, and a daughter Katherine who survived her mother. Lord Herbert never acknowledged these children as his, and there are no records of these children in the Wroth family records.

Lady Wroth was an accomplished writer-her poetry was noticed as early as 1613. She predated Aphra Behn (c. 1640-c. 1689), who wrote plays, poetry, and other works during the Restoration. (It has been suggested that Lady Wroth may have been Behn’s grandmother through her daughter Katherine, who married twice. I am unable to address this as so little is known of Aphra Behn’s personal history and much is contradictory.) Lady Wroth’s writings addressed themes of love, faithfulness, loyalty, and questions of power and gender.

Around 1617-1619, Lady Wroth wrote a play, a romance titled “Love’s Victory” and gave a bound, hand-written copy to Lord Pembroke before their affair ended.* The play was not published. It was, however, performed at Penshurst in 2008, the first professional performance.

Her most famous work is “The Countess of Montgomerie’s Urania” for which she was issued a licence to publish July 13, 1621. A lengthy novels, this was her first and only published work and was based extensively on the lives of her family and fellow courtiers, including her affair with the Earl of Pembroke. Considered a forerunner of the modern novel, it also created a huge scandal.*  “Mad Madge”, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (an author herself) made fun of it. Edward Denny, the Baron of Witham accused Lady Wroth of slander-he was so angry about it, he wrote scurrilous verses about her in 1623. She ended up withdrawing it from sale by December of 1621. Because of this work, Lady Wroth is considered the first English woman novelist.

The title page of Lady Mary Wroth's The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania 1621

 

Lady Wroth wrote a sequel to Urania, which hinted at her affair with the Earl of Pembroke and the fact that he fathered her children, but did not publish it. (It was published in 1999, and the manuscript is held at the Newberry Library in Chicago.) 

Lady Wroth owned a translation of Xenon’s CYROPAEDIA (biography of the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great) which was published in 1632. She also wrote poetry. In “The Countess of Montgomerie’s Urania”, the heroine of her novel wrote sonnets to the hero. Lady Wroth also wrote other poetry. Considered to be one of the first women to write a sonnet sequence, over 200 of her poems are known, and there may be others not yet discovered.

After her affair with the Earl of Pembroke ended, Lady Wroth no longer attended court, apparently going into seclusion. She was heavily in debt, and received help more than once from the king to stave off creditors. Another blow came when William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke died in 1630. She died in March of 1651 (or 1653), at age 53. After her death, some of her possessions, including some writings came into her daughter's hands and were preserved.*. Her primary home, Loughton House, which included her library, burned down in the 1800s.

*See "The Secret Codes of Lady Wroth, The First Female Novelist" by V.M. Braganza.  

Sources for Lady Mary Wroth, Author include:


Waller, Gary. THE SIDNEY FAMILY ROMANCE Mary Wroth, William Herbert, and the Early Modern Construction of Gender. 1993: Wayne State University Press, Detroit.

Early Modern Women Research Network. “Mary Wroth, Biography.” here

Goucher College online. “Lady Mary Wroth, The Countess of Montgomerie’s Urania (including “Pamphilia to Amphialanthus”) (1621).” (No author or post date.) here

Luminarium.org “Lady Mary Wroth (1587? -1651?)” by John Butler and Anniina Jokinen. (No post date.) here

Orlando Project, Cambridge University. “Lady Mary Wroth Entry.” Overview. here

Smithsonian Magazine. “The Secret Codes of Lady Wroth, the First Female English Novelist,” by V. M. Braganza, September 2021. [Print version title: “Decoding Lady Wroth”], here

The Monstrous Regiment of Women blog. “Mary Sidney Wroth, Pamphielia, Poetry, and Prose,” posted on October 18, 2015 by Sharon L. Jansen. here

The Sidney Homepage online. Biography. “Lady Mary Wroth,” by Nandini Das. (No post date.) here

University of Saskatchewan, Digital Research Center. “Lady Mary Wroth, Biographical Introduction.” (No author shown.) Revised June 8, 1998, contact person Ron Cooley, Dept. of English. here

Wikisource.org DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY, 1885-1900. “Wroth, Mary” by Sidney Lee. here

Images

Lady Mary Wroth (Public domain) here

The Countess of Montgomerie's Urania Title Page (1621) (Creative Commons) here

An avid reader, Lauren Gilbert was introduced to English authors early in life. Lauren has a Bachelor of Arts degree in liberal arts English with a minor in Art History. She has presented several programs for the Palm Beaches Region of the Jane Austen Society of North America, and recently for the Jane Austen Fest in Mt. Dora, FL. She lives in Florida with her husband. Her most recent novel, A RATIONAL ATTACHMENT, is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and more. She is currently working on a non-fiction book. For more information, visit her website at here , her Facebook page here and her Amazon page at here.

Female Spaces: Circulating Libraries and the Regency era Novel

by Maria Grace

James Fordyce, in his Sermons to Young Women, counsels strongly against novels, the very sort of books offered by local and easily accessible circulating libraries. (Despite the face he had not read them, of course. But I digress…) He declared:
What shall we say of certain books, which we are assured (for we have not read them) are in their nature so shameful, in their tendency so pestiferous, and contain such rank treason against the royalty of Virtue, such horrible violation of all decorum, that she who can bear to peruse them must in her soul be a prostitute, let her reputation in life be what it will be. Can it be true . . . that any young woman, pretending to decency, should endure for a moment to look on this infernal brood of futility and lewdness? (Fordyce 176-177).

Jane Austen and the Circulating Library

Happily for all of us, Jane Austen did not seem to share that sentiment. Not only was she a subscriber to circulating libraries, her patronage was sought after. On December 18, 1798, she wrote to her sister Cassandra: I have received a very civil note from Mrs. Martin requesting my name as a Subscriber to her Library which opens the 14th of January, & my name, or rather Yours is accordingly given. My Mother finds the Money … As an inducement to subscribe Mrs. Martin tells us that her Collection is not to consist only of Novels, but of every kind of Literature, 8cc. &cc.- She might have spared this pretention to our family who are great Novel-readers and not ashamed of being so;-but it was necessary I suppose to the self-consequence of half her subscribers." (Letters 38-39). So while Austen was very accepting of novels, the local librarian realized the concern and tried to address it, even as she worked to drum up patronage for her business.

Austen imbued her many characters with a love for books and libraries as well.

Fanny found it impossible not to try for books again. There were none in her father's house; but wealth is luxurious and daring-and some of hers found its way to a circulating library. She became a subscriber-amazed at being anything in pro pria persona, amazed at her own doings in every way; to be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any one's improvement in view in her choice! But so it was. Susan had read nothing, and Fanny longed to give her a share in her own first pleasures, and inspire a taste for the biography and poetry which she delighted in herself. (Mansfield Park) 

Though is this case, she does have Fanny eschew novels as reading material for her sister.

Others of Austen’s characters, like Mr. Collins, clearly shared Fordyce’s disapprobation of novels:

By tea-time, however, the dose had been enough, and Mr. Bennet was glad to take his guest into the drawing-room again, and when tea was over, glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but on beholding it (for everything announced it to be from a circulating library), he started back, and begging pardon, protested that he never read novels. (Pride and Prejudice)

What made circulating libraries so important to not just Jane Austen, but Georgian era women in general and what was the role of the humble novel in the whole affair?

Libraries as refuges of the female middle class and gentry

During the late Georgian and Regency eras, there were few public spaces which could be enjoyed by women of good reputation, but limited means. Tea, coffee and chocolate houses might be enjoyed, if one could afford them. But women had no clubs like men did—a place to offer refuge from the day to day. They did though have the possibility of the circulating library.

Though libraries did require a subscription in order to rent books, one could go to the library whenever she wished without paying a fee beyond that subscription. Not surprisingly, circulating libraries became fashionable meeting places for women to see and be seen by others. They offering their patrons sitting areas were raffles and games could be played; some offered expensive (and often distinctly feminine) merchandise for sale. Perhaps most significantly, they offered women an opportunity to read on a large scale including histories, philosophies, biographies, travel, poetry, and plenty of fictional works. (Hilden, 2018) Austen seemed to use the character of Fanny Price to suggest that circulating libraries could ideally be a means for the intellectual liberation of women of small means. (Erickson, 1990)

Not everyone held such positive attitudes toward circulating libraries. Considering libraries largely originated as repositories of theological publications, one cannot escape the irony that by the end of the eighteenth century, circulating libraries drew criticism as sources of corruption. Critics, like Fordyce, suggested that the novels that made up the as much as seventy five percent of a circulating library’s business were responsible for encouraging idleness as well as corrupting the taste and morals of young ladies especially.(Kane, 2011) Many believed that reading novels would give impressionable (and somewhat irrational) young ladies unrealistic expectations about life. (Hilden, 2018)

Because after all, women were far too stupid to be able to tell the difference between a Gothic horror and real life. It is interesting how is seems Austen took this belief head on in Northanger Abbey in the character of Catherine Morland. Though for a bit there it seems as though Catherine might have been just a touch confused as she makes assumptions about General Tilney, by the end, Henry Tilney assures her that her instincts were right even if she got the exact details a bit mixed up.

Libraries and the Rise of the Novel

Publishers also registered concerns about the circulating library, afraid that it would negatively impact their business. But James Lackington, proprietor of the Temple of Muses, noted in the 1794 edition of his memoirs, “thousands of books are purchased every year, by such as have first borrowed them at libraries.” (Erickson, 1990) Moreover, publishers found that increasing numbers of their print runs were purchased by circulating libraries. In 1770, about forty percent of a novel’s print run were sold to libraries. That number increased into the early nineteenth century. (Erickson, 1990)

To economize somewhat, libraries ordered their books with the cheapest possible bindings. Home libraries usually ordered books in cloth or, more expensive, leather bindings. Circulating libraries used a conspicuous marble patterned paper binding that distinguished library books from all others as Austen noted in the way Mr. Collins identified a library book in Pride and Prejudice. These cheap bindings also meant the books lacked the durability of privately owned books and, surviving copies of some of the period's novels are very rare. (Erickson, 1990)

Libraries as publishers

In order to keep up with demand for new books, later in the 18th century, some of the circulating libraries began to take on the role of publisher as well. Although they lacked the broad distribution channels that traditional publishers had, they held a unique distinction.

Unlike traditional publishers, these smaller presses published many works by female authors, although these were often published anonymously to avoid prejudice by the reading public.

Minerva press

Minerva Press Circulating Library in London, created by John Lane, was the largest circulating library in the 18th century. The library advertised over 20,000 titles, compared to the 5,000 titles most libraries averaged, with 1,000 considered works of fiction. (Hilden, 2018) Minerva Press, became known for printing Gothic horror and sentimental romance novels, including The Mysteries of Udolfo by Mrs. Radcliffe (that Catherine Morland read during Northanger Abbey.)

Though some argued that were hurriedly written to a formula by obscure women writers, these publishers “changed to course of publishing and really opened the door to the social acceptability of female authors, as well as created a better variety of fictional novels.” (Hatch, 2014)

It is interesting to note how much the impact of circulating libraries on publishing resembles the transformation of the publishing industry in the first decade of the 2000’s with the advent of the e-reader and electronic publishing down to the criticisms offered toward authors and books published by them.

References

“British Newspaper History”. Accessed September 6, 2018 https://www.999inks.co.uk/british-newspaper-history.html

“Book Shops” Georgian Index. 2003 Accessed August 29, 2018. http://www.georgianindex.net/books/Hatchard.html

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Tor, 1988.

Austen, Jane, Terry Castle, and John Davie. Northanger Abbey; Lady Susan ; The Watsons ; Sanditon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Austen, Jane, Marilyn Butler, and James Kinsley. Mansfield Park. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Austen, Jane, Claude Julien. Rawson, and John Davie. Persuasion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Austen, Jane. Ed. R. W. Chapman. Jane Austen's letters to her Sister Cassandra and others. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Benson, Mary Margaret. “Parasols & Gloves & Broches & Circulating Libraries.” Persuasions # 19, 1997 Jane Austen Society of North America.

Erickson, Lee. "The Economy of Novel Reading: Jane Austen and the Circulating Library." Studies in English Literature, 1500-190030, no. 4 (1990): 573-90. doi:10.2307/450560.

Feather, John. The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985.

Fordyce, James. "From Sermons to Young Women." Women in the Eighteenth Century: Constructions of Femininity. Ed. Vivien Jones. London: Routledge, 1990. 176-79.

Glover, Anne. Regency Hot Spots: Bookseller Shops and the Subscription Library. Regency Reader. November 6, 2015. Accessed August 1, 2018. http://www.regrom.com/2015/11/06/regency-hot-spots-bookseller-shops-and-the-subscription-library/

Hatch, Donna. Circulating Libraries in Regency England. Historical Hussies. Friday, November 7, 2014. Accessed July 0, 2018. http://historicalhussies.blogspot.com/2014/11/circulating-libraries-in-regency-england.html

Hilden, L. A. Circulating Libraries in Regency England. L.A. Hilden. July 23, 2018. Accessed July 31, 2018. http://www.lahilden.com/index.php?categoryid=6&p2_articleid=206

Jacobs, Edward and Antonia Forster. "'Lost Books' and Publishing History: Two Annotated Lists of Imprints for the Fiction Titles Listed in the Circulating Library Catalogs of Thomas Lowndes (1766) and M. Heavisides (1790), of Which No Known Copies Survive." The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 89 (1995): 260-97.

Kane, Kathryn. Before the Call Number: The Pressmark. The Regency Redingote. January 16, 2015. Accessed August 29, 2018. https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/before-the-call-number-the-pressmark/

Kane, Kathryn. Regency Circulating Libraries — Why, How and Who? The Regency Redingote. October, 211, 2011, Accessed August 12, 2018. https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/regency-circulating-libraries-why-how-and-who/.

Manley, K. A. "London Circulating Library Catalogues of the 1740s." Library History 8 (1989) 3,74-79.

Mc Leod, Lesley Anne. Who Doesn't Love a Library? Lesley Anne McLeod. Wednesday, November 8, 2017. http://lesleyannemcleod.blogspot.com/2017/11/who-doesnt-love-library.html

Sanborn, Vic. The Circulating Library in Regency Resorts. Jane Austen’s World. August 30, 2010. Accessed August 15, 2018. https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/

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Though Maria Grace has been writing fiction since she was ten years old, those early efforts happily reside in a file drawer and are unlikely to see the light of day again, for which many are grateful.

After penning five file-drawer novels in high school, she took a break from writing to pursue college and earn her doctorate. After 16 years of university teaching, she returned to her first love, fiction writing.

Click here to find her books on Amazon. For more on her writing and other Random Bits of Fascination, visit her website. You can also like her on Facebook, or follow on Twitter.