The Seymour Sisters and Their Circles

In 1550 there appeared in Paris a Latin elegy in 104 distichs praising the life and commemorating the death of Marguerite de Navarre. The title named the young authors as Anne, Margaret, and Jane Seymour, but the volume also contained a dedication by Nicolas Denisot, their tutor who had seen the work into print; a prose epistle; and poems in Latin and Greek by various French authors. The volume was reedited in 1551 with a different title and included translations of their elegy and many, mostly new, poems in Latin, Greek, and the vernacular. The Seymours’ authorship of the elegy has more than once been called into question, but arguments fail to take into account the social and cultural circles to which the girls and their poem belonged, while ignoring all that has been written on early modern women writers or on new ways of considering early modern works as collaborative productions. This entry will, on the contrary, consider these factors in responding to the claim that the whole poetic production was a hoax.