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Isabella Whitney, Mary Sidney and Amelia Lanyer: Renaissance Women Poets
Social convention may have prevented Renaissance women writers from openly taking part in the political and religious debates of their day, but they found varied and innovative ways to intervene. Collecting the work of three great poets-Isabella Whitney, Mary Sidney, and Aemilia Lanyer-this volume repositions women writers of the Renaissance by presenting their poems in the context of their history and culture. Whitney's poems offer the only glimpse into her life, express a concern for women's lack of social and economic power, and powerfully evoke sixteenth-century London. Sidney produced potent translations of Petrarch's works and the Psalms, as well as original verse. Lanyer wrote poems that advocate and praise female virtue and Christian piety, but reflect a desire for an idealized, classless world. The strong and original voices of these three women-each from different social, cultural, and historical strata-demonstrate the emergence of a new female identity during the Renaissance and broaden the common notions of English Literature's golden age.
412 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2001
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About the author
Isabella Whitney
11 books5 followersIsabella Whitney (late 1540s-after 1580) was born sometime in the late 1540s in Coole Pilate, Cheshire, England. She came from a reformist family which allowed the daughters as well as sons access to a certain degree of humanist education. She had a brother, Geoffrey Whitney, who wrote A Choice of Emblems in 1586. From what we can gather from A Sweet Nosegay Whitney also had a brother-in-law and three sisters, though their identities are not certain. Unlike many of the other women writers of the sixteenth century, Isabella Whitney did not come from a noble family. Rather, she was of the middle class and lived on meager finances. This can be seen in A Sweet Nosegay, where she states that she is "whole in body, and in mind, / but very weak in purse". Isabella left Cheshire at an early age to work in London as a servant. While there, she wrote multiple works demonstrating an acute awareness of public taste. This awareness, combined with a sharp satirical tone allowed her to become one of the first professional women writers in Europe. She was also the first woman to write a collection of original poetry, and is thought to be the first professional female poet in England.
According to most critics, Isabella Whitney’s works contained a certain degree of autobiographical material. This can be seen in two of her connected poems: A Communication Which the Author had to London before she Made Her Will and The Manner of Her Will, and What She Left to London and to All Those in it, of her Departing where the writer is not only lacking in finances, but also spends the majority her time amongst "the poor, the imprisoned, and the insane", otherwise known as the commonwealth of London. Her most innovative poems were her verse epistles, many of which were addressed to female relatives. She addressed her poem "Will and Testament" to the city of London, mocking it as a heartless friend, greedy and lacking charity. These works were written in ballad metre and contained both witty and animated descriptions of everyday life. Judging from these popular inclusions, it is likely that the reason for the publishing of her works was simply to supplement her scanty income.
Isabella Whitney pioneered her field of women poets. She published her poetry in a time when it was not customary for a woman, especially one not of the aristocracy, to do so. In addition, her material contained controversial issues such as class-consciousness and political commentary as well as witty satire, and was made available to the upper and the middle class. Whitney’s two best known works are The copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge gentilwoman: to her vnconstant louer written in (1567?), and A sweet nosgay, or pleasant posye contayning a hundred and ten phylosophicall flowers written in 1578.
According to most critics, Isabella Whitney’s works contained a certain degree of autobiographical material. This can be seen in two of her connected poems: A Communication Which the Author had to London before she Made Her Will and The Manner of Her Will, and What She Left to London and to All Those in it, of her Departing where the writer is not only lacking in finances, but also spends the majority her time amongst "the poor, the imprisoned, and the insane", otherwise known as the commonwealth of London. Her most innovative poems were her verse epistles, many of which were addressed to female relatives. She addressed her poem "Will and Testament" to the city of London, mocking it as a heartless friend, greedy and lacking charity. These works were written in ballad metre and contained both witty and animated descriptions of everyday life. Judging from these popular inclusions, it is likely that the reason for the publishing of her works was simply to supplement her scanty income.
Isabella Whitney pioneered her field of women poets. She published her poetry in a time when it was not customary for a woman, especially one not of the aristocracy, to do so. In addition, her material contained controversial issues such as class-consciousness and political commentary as well as witty satire, and was made available to the upper and the middle class. Whitney’s two best known works are The copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge gentilwoman: to her vnconstant louer written in (1567?), and A sweet nosgay, or pleasant posye contayning a hundred and ten phylosophicall flowers written in 1578.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 14, 2016
Should we still accept the idea of 'women writers'?
That a mainstream publisher like Penguin have issued this (2000) is a sign that Renaissance women writers have become a standard, albeit still marginalised, part of the canon. This is a good anthology which focuses on three very different English women: the elite Mary Sidney, the 'middle-class' Isabella Whitney, and the more socially-unclassifiable Aemilia Lanyer.
And yet, as Danielle Clark, the editor, herself states, the very fact that these writers are classified as 'women writers' separates them from 'proper' writers and poets, implicitly male. That position is not helped by the fact that Whitney is not, strictly speaking, that good a poet; Sidney is represented as a translator of the psalms and one of Petrarch's Triumphs, and only Lanyer is shown to be an 'original' poet, interesting rather than brilliant. So while this volume certainly makes women's poetry accessible, at the same time it panders to the idea of women as second-rate writers.
If Whitney had been located in a volume of popular ballads and 'street poetry', or Sidney in a book of religious poetry or translations of the psalms, say, we might perhaps get a more coherent picture of them in relation to their literary contexts. As it is, under the label 'Renaissance... poets' comparisons will inevitably be made with Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne who stood head and shoulders above most other writers of the period, male or female - and these women will thus reconfirm the secondary place of 'female writers'.
So this is a useful volume to have - I'm just not sure that gender is a good category to use for selection and organisation.
That a mainstream publisher like Penguin have issued this (2000) is a sign that Renaissance women writers have become a standard, albeit still marginalised, part of the canon. This is a good anthology which focuses on three very different English women: the elite Mary Sidney, the 'middle-class' Isabella Whitney, and the more socially-unclassifiable Aemilia Lanyer.
And yet, as Danielle Clark, the editor, herself states, the very fact that these writers are classified as 'women writers' separates them from 'proper' writers and poets, implicitly male. That position is not helped by the fact that Whitney is not, strictly speaking, that good a poet; Sidney is represented as a translator of the psalms and one of Petrarch's Triumphs, and only Lanyer is shown to be an 'original' poet, interesting rather than brilliant. So while this volume certainly makes women's poetry accessible, at the same time it panders to the idea of women as second-rate writers.
If Whitney had been located in a volume of popular ballads and 'street poetry', or Sidney in a book of religious poetry or translations of the psalms, say, we might perhaps get a more coherent picture of them in relation to their literary contexts. As it is, under the label 'Renaissance... poets' comparisons will inevitably be made with Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne who stood head and shoulders above most other writers of the period, male or female - and these women will thus reconfirm the secondary place of 'female writers'.
So this is a useful volume to have - I'm just not sure that gender is a good category to use for selection and organisation.
October 18, 2015
I went to a college run by feminist nuns. Yep, get over it. I read very few of these poems in college. There is a reason for that. A few of the poems are good.
Many aren't.
Many aren't.
July 5, 2024
Introduction
Danielle Clarke's introduction is absolutely brilliant. Her summary of the critical tropes which have tended to categorise women writers by their gender rather than by any shared traits of their literature is thought-provoking and her arguments for placing these three writers together despite this are convincing. The short biographies and analysis Clarke offers are equally insightful and provide useful background to the poetry, and her style is very pleasant to read. Five stars.
Isabella Whitney, A sweet Nosgay
Whitney is not a technically proficient poet and some of her rhymes are laughably contrived. She bends meaning to fit metre and rhyme scheme rather than creating a cohesive whole; form and language seem forced together rather than flowing together to serve a single artistic vision. Despite this, the content of Whitney's poetry is so witty, intelligent and incisive that I was absolutely convinced of her brilliance. Her 'Will and Testament' is such a funny idea for a social commentary that I was entirely carried away by it and I laughed out loud at some of her lines. It is a tragedy that Whitney did not live at a time when she might have run a blog, or written cutting editorials for an online newspaper. Five stars.
Mary Sidney Herbert, The Sidney Psalter
Sidney is far more technically advanced than Whitney but also much more boring. Some of the psalms were very moving, especially those calling out to God begging not to be forsaken; Sidney is adept at evoking loneliness, despair and grief, perhaps inflected with her own losses of her brother and parents. Her metrical innovations and the ways that she plays with the psalm form are very much in the virtuoso mode, something I am sure her contemporaries would have been impressed by, but frankly acrostic poems just don't do it for me. Four stars.
Aemilia Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
Lanyer alternates between very traditional verse and moments of protofeminist brilliance. While reading I found myself sinking into boredom and suddenly reviving, devouring the next page or so, and then slowly sinking back... Her defence of Eve was fantastic and some of the Passion evoked genuine sorrow through Christ's aching resignation. It is a retelling of the Passion that foregrounds emotion rather than narrative, although the story is still there - in fact, the moments that did prioritise narrative were the moments that I found dull. The Passion, for Lanyer, seems to be a predestined working-through of grief which contrasts the brutality and faithlessness of men to the emotion and faith of the women who remain in the background of the narrative but whose anguish suffuses the poem and surfaces in Christ. He has already been feminised by female religious figures (shout out to Margary Kempe and my gal Julian of Norwich) as a maternal figure whose blood shed on the cross nourishes the soul as mother's milk nourishes the body. In this tradition, the access Lanyer gives the reader to Christ's internal grief and fear repositions female tears as sacred expressions of divine forgiveness. In making Christ womanlike by his emotion, women's grief becomes religious and powerful, justifying Lanyer's own role in writing and publishing the Passion itself. I give this four stars, because although it is brilliant it was also a bit of a slog.
Overall I am very glad that I read this collection. Thinking about these three women together emphasised their vastly different circumstances and motivations, and served to highlight the diversity of talent and interest among early modern women that has been obscured by their being dismissed as "woman writers".
Danielle Clarke's introduction is absolutely brilliant. Her summary of the critical tropes which have tended to categorise women writers by their gender rather than by any shared traits of their literature is thought-provoking and her arguments for placing these three writers together despite this are convincing. The short biographies and analysis Clarke offers are equally insightful and provide useful background to the poetry, and her style is very pleasant to read. Five stars.
Isabella Whitney, A sweet Nosgay
Whitney is not a technically proficient poet and some of her rhymes are laughably contrived. She bends meaning to fit metre and rhyme scheme rather than creating a cohesive whole; form and language seem forced together rather than flowing together to serve a single artistic vision. Despite this, the content of Whitney's poetry is so witty, intelligent and incisive that I was absolutely convinced of her brilliance. Her 'Will and Testament' is such a funny idea for a social commentary that I was entirely carried away by it and I laughed out loud at some of her lines. It is a tragedy that Whitney did not live at a time when she might have run a blog, or written cutting editorials for an online newspaper. Five stars.
Mary Sidney Herbert, The Sidney Psalter
Sidney is far more technically advanced than Whitney but also much more boring. Some of the psalms were very moving, especially those calling out to God begging not to be forsaken; Sidney is adept at evoking loneliness, despair and grief, perhaps inflected with her own losses of her brother and parents. Her metrical innovations and the ways that she plays with the psalm form are very much in the virtuoso mode, something I am sure her contemporaries would have been impressed by, but frankly acrostic poems just don't do it for me. Four stars.
Aemilia Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
Lanyer alternates between very traditional verse and moments of protofeminist brilliance. While reading I found myself sinking into boredom and suddenly reviving, devouring the next page or so, and then slowly sinking back... Her defence of Eve was fantastic and some of the Passion evoked genuine sorrow through Christ's aching resignation. It is a retelling of the Passion that foregrounds emotion rather than narrative, although the story is still there - in fact, the moments that did prioritise narrative were the moments that I found dull. The Passion, for Lanyer, seems to be a predestined working-through of grief which contrasts the brutality and faithlessness of men to the emotion and faith of the women who remain in the background of the narrative but whose anguish suffuses the poem and surfaces in Christ. He has already been feminised by female religious figures (shout out to Margary Kempe and my gal Julian of Norwich) as a maternal figure whose blood shed on the cross nourishes the soul as mother's milk nourishes the body. In this tradition, the access Lanyer gives the reader to Christ's internal grief and fear repositions female tears as sacred expressions of divine forgiveness. In making Christ womanlike by his emotion, women's grief becomes religious and powerful, justifying Lanyer's own role in writing and publishing the Passion itself. I give this four stars, because although it is brilliant it was also a bit of a slog.
Overall I am very glad that I read this collection. Thinking about these three women together emphasised their vastly different circumstances and motivations, and served to highlight the diversity of talent and interest among early modern women that has been obscured by their being dismissed as "woman writers".
November 16, 2018
This review was originally published on warmdayswillnevercease.wordpress.com
This collection by Penguin focuses on three female writers from the English Renaissance: Isabella Whitney (c.1545-c.1577), Mary Sidney (1561-1621), and Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645). The collection features a very short biography and selected works of each poet. It also includes a very useful timeline.
Isabella Whitney (pp.1-43)
The section on Isabella Whitney contains most of her poetical works including A Sweet Nosegay (1573) and The Copy of a letter (1567). There’s a substantial amount of poetry featured here but I was confused as to why Penguin decided to put A Sweet Nosegay before The Copy of a letter since that’s not in chronological order. A Sweet Nosegay shows a change in Whitney’s writing and personality from The Copy of a letter and it would have been nice to see that progression highlighted in the collection. The collection also includes Whitney’s mock will Her Will and Testament which has two sections and ensured Whitney’s status as a trendsetter.
Psalm 40 SidneyMary Sidney (pp.44-202)
This collection focuses mostly on her work in the Sidney Psalms (aka, the Sidney Psalter) which she created with her brother, Sir Philip Sidney. It also includes the first two chapters of Sidney’s translation of Petrarch’s Trionfo della Morte/The Triumph of Death which I think is a really interesting poem. I do wish that they’d included less of the Psalms and more of her other poetry though.
Salve Deux Rex Judaeorum
Aemilia Lanyer (pp.203-280)
The last section of the book features the poetry of Aemilia Lanyer and there’s not a lot of it compared to Sidney, unfortunately. The collection concentrates on Lanyer’s only published poetry collection from 1611, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail, God, King of the Jews), and it’s an excellent collection of poetry. It’s the only work that can definitely be identified as Lanyer’s since she published it under her own name so I can understand why the collection only uses this work.
I love this collection but I do wish that Mary Sidney’s section was more varied and that Isabella Whitney’s section was in chronological order. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in female poets from this era or just poetry from the English Renaissance. It was unusual for women to be published poets during this era and they’re all incredibly fascinating and talented women.
This collection by Penguin focuses on three female writers from the English Renaissance: Isabella Whitney (c.1545-c.1577), Mary Sidney (1561-1621), and Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645). The collection features a very short biography and selected works of each poet. It also includes a very useful timeline.
Isabella Whitney (pp.1-43)
The section on Isabella Whitney contains most of her poetical works including A Sweet Nosegay (1573) and The Copy of a letter (1567). There’s a substantial amount of poetry featured here but I was confused as to why Penguin decided to put A Sweet Nosegay before The Copy of a letter since that’s not in chronological order. A Sweet Nosegay shows a change in Whitney’s writing and personality from The Copy of a letter and it would have been nice to see that progression highlighted in the collection. The collection also includes Whitney’s mock will Her Will and Testament which has two sections and ensured Whitney’s status as a trendsetter.
Psalm 40 SidneyMary Sidney (pp.44-202)
This collection focuses mostly on her work in the Sidney Psalms (aka, the Sidney Psalter) which she created with her brother, Sir Philip Sidney. It also includes the first two chapters of Sidney’s translation of Petrarch’s Trionfo della Morte/The Triumph of Death which I think is a really interesting poem. I do wish that they’d included less of the Psalms and more of her other poetry though.
Salve Deux Rex Judaeorum
Aemilia Lanyer (pp.203-280)
The last section of the book features the poetry of Aemilia Lanyer and there’s not a lot of it compared to Sidney, unfortunately. The collection concentrates on Lanyer’s only published poetry collection from 1611, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail, God, King of the Jews), and it’s an excellent collection of poetry. It’s the only work that can definitely be identified as Lanyer’s since she published it under her own name so I can understand why the collection only uses this work.
I love this collection but I do wish that Mary Sidney’s section was more varied and that Isabella Whitney’s section was in chronological order. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in female poets from this era or just poetry from the English Renaissance. It was unusual for women to be published poets during this era and they’re all incredibly fascinating and talented women.
October 3, 2021
*Rating just for A Sweet Nosegay by Isabella Whitney*
October 8, 2023
This is a fascinating book, if only for pointing out that there were (good) English Renaissance women poets.
Mary Sidney has sometimes been credited as being the real Shakespeare, in that she wrote all his plays and poems, and the Stratford man was merely her "front". She wasn't. Any (even cursory) readings of her poems will show that she is completely different, in style, in content, in form, (in quality?) from Shakespeare.
Okay, we only have Sidney's religious poetry, whereas Shakespeare wrote nothing that is unambiguously about religion at all, but Sidney's Psalms show an utterly different approach to poesy: a wide variety of different styles, line-lengths, rhyme-patterns etc where Shakey used either pentameter (usually) or tetrameter (occasionally) and either couplets or quatrains for rhymes, unless he was showing something special. Sidney is writing Psalms that can be sung, and (like a large number of church hymns) the words are sometimes deeply profound, sometimes close to doggerel to fit the rhyme and rhythm. Fifth century Hebrew verse, or third century Latin translations of the same, do not necessarily make a good fit for sixteenth century English in Italianate verse forms. There are, as I said, some magnificent pieces of verse in there (that might rival some of Shakespeare's poetry) but also some decidedly more dodgy stuff.
The other thing that we expect (and get) from Shakespeare is ambiguity: Sidney has a clear religious message that she wants the Psalms to present. If the message isn't clear enough in the original, she provides it. From a twenty-first century (post-romantic) perspective, this weakens the poetry: from the perspective of a 1600 Puritan, it probably makes these poems brilliant.
Aemilia Lanyer has the link to Shakespeare in that she may be (but probably isn't) the Dark Lady of the sonnets. She was the "mistress" of Shakespeare's patron, Lord Hunsdon (though whether you can really describe a teenager as the mistress of a man in his late 50s is a moot point), and she has one book of poems, presented as one united work, but really not. The main piece is Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, a 1610s feminist retelling of the Bible, focusing on Eve, Jesus' mother, Judith, Esther, the Queen of Sheba, etc. I don't know if the bits cut by Danielle Clarke (about 300 lines all in all) are significantly weaker than the rest, but what remains of the poem is splendid: not moving, in the way Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Donne's best stuff is, but forceful, polemical, and all written in a strong ottava rima.
Bookending the main poem are her dedications to notable women of her time, some of whom it is implied she knew really well, some of whom I suspect she merely needed money off. Notable in that they are all addressed to women (and well annotated by Clarke) and fascinating for intimate details, but not that fabulous as poetry. And finishing with her "Description of Cooke-Ham", where she paints a vision of an earthly paradise in Berkshire. This seems to have no clear connection to the main poem, and may have been included because she had written it. It's lovely, but not in the same class as Salve Deus.
Isabella Whitney is totally different: about twenty years earlier than Sidney, and almost all written in old-fashioned "fourteeners", which gives the poems a dum-di-dum feel, like light verse, but strangely, of the three, she's the most moving. Within some poems giving advice to sisters, and letters to friends, one gets the impression of a woman who's been exploited in love, and is really suffering. Yes, the one explicit poem about this could be a modern Heroide, but the feeling seems to linger in the other poems.
As a result, of the three, Whitney seems to be the most "truthful" (and therefore probably the most "feminist") of the three poets. One should be careful about reading autobiography into poems (poets are most notorious liars), but she signs most of her poems in a way that suggests they are "her" in a way that Lanyer's and Sidney's are not.
Time for a critical reappraisal?
Mary Sidney has sometimes been credited as being the real Shakespeare, in that she wrote all his plays and poems, and the Stratford man was merely her "front". She wasn't. Any (even cursory) readings of her poems will show that she is completely different, in style, in content, in form, (in quality?) from Shakespeare.
Okay, we only have Sidney's religious poetry, whereas Shakespeare wrote nothing that is unambiguously about religion at all, but Sidney's Psalms show an utterly different approach to poesy: a wide variety of different styles, line-lengths, rhyme-patterns etc where Shakey used either pentameter (usually) or tetrameter (occasionally) and either couplets or quatrains for rhymes, unless he was showing something special. Sidney is writing Psalms that can be sung, and (like a large number of church hymns) the words are sometimes deeply profound, sometimes close to doggerel to fit the rhyme and rhythm. Fifth century Hebrew verse, or third century Latin translations of the same, do not necessarily make a good fit for sixteenth century English in Italianate verse forms. There are, as I said, some magnificent pieces of verse in there (that might rival some of Shakespeare's poetry) but also some decidedly more dodgy stuff.
The other thing that we expect (and get) from Shakespeare is ambiguity: Sidney has a clear religious message that she wants the Psalms to present. If the message isn't clear enough in the original, she provides it. From a twenty-first century (post-romantic) perspective, this weakens the poetry: from the perspective of a 1600 Puritan, it probably makes these poems brilliant.
Aemilia Lanyer has the link to Shakespeare in that she may be (but probably isn't) the Dark Lady of the sonnets. She was the "mistress" of Shakespeare's patron, Lord Hunsdon (though whether you can really describe a teenager as the mistress of a man in his late 50s is a moot point), and she has one book of poems, presented as one united work, but really not. The main piece is Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, a 1610s feminist retelling of the Bible, focusing on Eve, Jesus' mother, Judith, Esther, the Queen of Sheba, etc. I don't know if the bits cut by Danielle Clarke (about 300 lines all in all) are significantly weaker than the rest, but what remains of the poem is splendid: not moving, in the way Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Donne's best stuff is, but forceful, polemical, and all written in a strong ottava rima.
Bookending the main poem are her dedications to notable women of her time, some of whom it is implied she knew really well, some of whom I suspect she merely needed money off. Notable in that they are all addressed to women (and well annotated by Clarke) and fascinating for intimate details, but not that fabulous as poetry. And finishing with her "Description of Cooke-Ham", where she paints a vision of an earthly paradise in Berkshire. This seems to have no clear connection to the main poem, and may have been included because she had written it. It's lovely, but not in the same class as Salve Deus.
Isabella Whitney is totally different: about twenty years earlier than Sidney, and almost all written in old-fashioned "fourteeners", which gives the poems a dum-di-dum feel, like light verse, but strangely, of the three, she's the most moving. Within some poems giving advice to sisters, and letters to friends, one gets the impression of a woman who's been exploited in love, and is really suffering. Yes, the one explicit poem about this could be a modern Heroide, but the feeling seems to linger in the other poems.
As a result, of the three, Whitney seems to be the most "truthful" (and therefore probably the most "feminist") of the three poets. One should be careful about reading autobiography into poems (poets are most notorious liars), but she signs most of her poems in a way that suggests they are "her" in a way that Lanyer's and Sidney's are not.
Time for a critical reappraisal?
December 12, 2018
Three prominent female voices speak to us from the sixteenth-century, offering views on their social status, economic position and their relationships with the men in their lives - or absence from them. Rather than writing as their contemporaries (Sidney, Shakespeare, Spencer) did, these women offer a distinctly new and 'other' perspective on Elizabethan society from top to bottom. From Isabella Whitney, a domestic servant in a London household, to Mary Sidney, sister of Sir Phillip, to Amelia Lanyer, a woman from the well-to-do middle class, these women traverse the city and its class boundaries to depict their varying experiences and concerns with a patriarchy that was determined to control their voices.
October 13, 2022
LANYER 😍😍😍😍
whitney 😍😍
sidney 😍
whitney 😍😍
sidney 😍
September 14, 2023
Glad to know being a girlie has transcended through the centuries 🥰
November 25, 2024
Sidney's psalms are great.
But Lanyer and Whitney were so so dull
But Lanyer and Whitney were so so dull
November 28, 2015
I loved Whitney's poems, she is definitely worth reading (especially considering that she was the first known woman to have non-devotional poetry published!). I only leafed through Sidney and Lanyer, but liked what I briefly read.
June 14, 2013
I especially enjoyed Mary Sidney's Psalms. :)
November 29, 2017
An amazing collection of women poets who are often missed by the assumption that renaissance women did nothing. Needs more recognition.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews