Mary Wroth: The Countess of Montgomery's Urania (Abridged) (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies)

by Mary Wroth, Mary Ellen Lamb (Editor)

The first romance written by an Englishwoman, 'Mary Wroth's Countess of Montgomery's Urania' is a literary tour de force in its own right. As the niece of Sir Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth was ideally situated as an observer and reporter of the social, literary, and political milieu of her time. This abridged modern-spelling edition, with a useful introduction and index of characters, makes this work newly accessible to general readers, students, and scholars. The text is based on the MRTS editions of 'The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery's Urania'; edited by Josephine A. Roberts (MRTS vol. 140, 1995); and 'The Second Part of the Countess of Montgomery's Urania,' edited by Josephine A. Roberts and completed by Suzanne Gossett and Janel Mueller (MRTS vol. 211, 1999).

Genres: Classics, Renaissance, Fiction, College, Poetry

292 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2011

About the author

Lady Mary Wroth (1587–1651/3) was an English poet of the Renaissance. A member of a distinguished literary English family, Wroth was among the first female British writers to have achieved an enduring reputation. She is perhaps best known for having written The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, the first extant prose romance by an English woman, and for Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, the first known sonnet sequence by an English woman.

Reviews

[brooke echternacht · Rating 3 out of 5]

Horrible to get through but I did write my final essay on it!!
Summary: Middle-aged royal-adjacent English widow was hot for her first cousin, and after being rejected writes the first romance written by a woman in print.
Pamphilia is just like me fr because I am also constant to a fault.
William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, is not hot enough to justify 300-some pages of pining.

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Unfortunately I did not have time to finish this read. The editor is coming to my university to speak with us about the process of editing the text and I so wanted to finish it but I just couldn’t:(

[Bennett Clary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn’t recommend this book, but it wasn’t awful. It’s a fun story but she writes far too much for my liking.

[Riley Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obsessed with Pamphilia and Antissia going to extreme lengths to avoid telling the truth. Amphilanthus is a false knave

[Eilidh Paterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pamphilia and her constancy.

[cat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointed. I loved Mary Wroth's poetry so I wanted to try out her prose - namely, the very first English Romance written by a woman. However, being unique in that regard does not justify how little I enjoyed her prose. True, I am biased against Renaissance prose but I really had faith for this, especially considering how much I loved Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World. Instead, the structure of the romance was lengthy and convoluted. Perhaps if I had read an abridged or modernised version, I would have found it more tolerable but I read the original text as available on Archive.org and found it difficult to sit through.
There were moments in this that I did love. I love her commentary on the connection between literature, and I do love reading about Renaissance love, on top of the poems interspersed throughout the text. These moments, however, were rare, instead lost in episodes of subplots about characters I cared little for.
Overall, Mary Wroth, while a great poet, is a mediocre prose writer in my opinion. Pamphilia and Amphilanthus still stands as possibly my favourite sonnet cycle ever written, and it is a shame that the quality of the romance did not compare to the concluding sonnet sequence.

[Laura Borger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wroth's clauses which span nearly a half a page and the convoluted A.D.D. nature of the story-telling - combined with language that rivals Shakespeare and Spenser in places - is not for everyone. First proto-novel / romance written by an Englishwoman - worth an examination for folks interested in women writers or writers contemporary to Shakespeare (she was also Philip Sidney's niece and this has parallels to his _Arcadia_). This is an abridged version of the two volumes (roughly 1400 pages in the originals), with modern spellings and punctuations. A good introduction before diving into the unbridged monster texts.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This version does a great job in abridging the larger work, making it a little more manageable. Wroth writes in an episodic fashion. She uses so many characters that it takes immense effort to remember characters and differentiate their stories from one another. However, Wroth presents interesting views on females and their relationship to men, especially when compared to her contemporaries.