Mary Wroth (1587–1651)

Lady Mary Wroth, née Sidney, was a member of an illustrious and aristocratic family. Her parents were Sir Robert Sidney, later 1st Earl of Leicester, and Lady Barbara Gamage, a wealthy Welsh heiress. Her paternal uncle was the poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney. During much of her childhood, Lady Mary's parents were away in the Netherlands, where her father served as governor of Flushing, so she spent much time at the homes of her paternal aunt Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, Baynard's Castle in London and Penshurst Place in Kent, a center of literary and cultural activity. Lady Mary received a formal education from tutors under the guidance of her both her parents, unusual for a girl of that era. In 1604, King James I arranged her marriage to Sir Robert Wroth, a wealthy Essex landowner; the union was unhappy. Robert Wroth appears to have been a gambler and an alcoholic. Despite this, Lady Mary became known for her literary endeavors and also for her performances in several masques at court. In 1614, her husband died, leaving her deeply in debt. Two years later, her young son also died, causing Lady Mary to lose the Wroth estate to her husband's next male heir. She entered iinto a relationship with her cousin William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke. The two had been childhood friends, and shared interests in the arts and literature. They had at least two children together, referenced in her book The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (1621), an enormous work. This was the first prose romance written by an Englishwoman.The title echoed its famous familial predecessor, Sir Philip Sidney's The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Lady Mary's contemporaries assumed the book was autobiographical, and she was heavily criticized by powerful noblemen for depicting her private life under the guise of fiction. Ben Jonson, on the other hand, praised the work. Lady Mary's period of notoriety was brief -- Urania was withdrawn from sale by the end of the year. However, the episode may have contributed to the low profile she kept in the last decades of her life. Lady Mary left court but did not stop writing, though her subsequent works, including a play and a continuation of Urania, were not published in her lifetime. William Herbert later abandoned her. Little else is known about her final years.