Herbert, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke

Mary Herbert (née Sidney), Countess of Pembroke (1561–1621) is one of the earliest English women to assume multiple literary roles as patron, editor, and writer. Her translations, elegies, encomia, and psalm paraphrases explore death, grief, and faith, thus utilizing genres and themes deemed suitable for women in the late Tudor period. But far from feeling restrained, she seems rather to have been at the forefront of many literary trends. Her poetic experimentation anticipates later metaphysical and religious verse; she uses imagery drawn from the lived experience of an intelligent aristocratic woman; and her work encouraged the next generation of writers, male and female. Straddling and complicating the junctures between manuscript and print publication, translation and originality, and feminine and universal concerns, Herbert is no longer overshadowed by Philip Sidney, the brother she made famous, but is instead viewed as a talented poet in her own right.