The Viscount De L'Isle, Penshurst Place

MS 1226

Copy, in a professional secretary and italic hand, 16 folio leaves, in contemporary vellum. Later owned by Robert Sidney (1563-1626), with some corrections on the last leaf in his hand. Late 16th century.

SiP 175: Sir Philip Sidney, A Defence of Poetry

Edited from this MS in Duncan-Jones & Van Dorsten, pp. 73-121. Collated in Feuillerat, III, 317-25.

A microfilm is at the University of Birmingham, Shakespeare Institute (Mic. S82).

First published in London, 1595. Feuillerat, III, 1-46.

See also SiP 226.

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A calligraphic copy of Psalms 4-150, transcribed, probably from the Countess of Pembroke's working copy, by John Davies (1565-1618) of Hereford, 135 folio leaves, imperfect; lacking a title and first three psalms, in later red leather. Late 16th century.

SiP 84: Sir Philip Sidney, The Psalms of David

Edited from this MS in Rathmell. Collated in Ringler and described pp. 546-7. Facsimile of Psalm 117 in John Buxton, Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance, revised edition (London, 1964), after p. 156. Discussed, with facsimile examples of ff. 45v, 54v, 118r, and 135r, in Noel Kinnamon, ‘The Sidney Psalms: The Penshurst and Tixall Manuscripts’, EMS, 2 (1990), 139-61.

Psalms 1-43 translated by Sidney. Psalms 44-150 translated by his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. First published complete in London, 1823, ed. S.W. Singer. Psalms 1-43, without the Countess of Pembroke's revisions, edited in Ringler, pp. 265-337. Psalms 1-150 in her revised form edited in The Psalms of Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke, ed. J.C.A. Rathmell (New York, 1963). Psalms 44-150 also edited in The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert Countess of Pembroke (1988), Vol. II.

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Epitome of Books I-III, with ten of the poems, based on the edition of 1627; entitled ‘The History of Arcadia’. 17th century.

SiP 105: Sir Philip Sidney, The New Arcadia

This MS recorded in Ringler, p. 531.

The unfinished revised version of Arcadia (the ‘New Arcadia’) first published in London, 1590. Edited, as The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The New Arcadia), by Victor Skretkowicz (Oxford, 1987).

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Autograph MS, almost entirely in Wroth's formal italic hand, 49 quarto leaves, in contemporary dark red morocco gilt. Probably copied from the Huntington MS (WrM 14). c.1620.

*WrM 13: Lady Mary Wroth, Love's Victory

A complete facsimile of this MS, with transcription, in Brennan's edition. Illustration of the cover in Josephine A. Roberts, ‘Deciphering Women's Pastoral: Coded Language in Wroth's Loves's Victory’, in Representing Women in Renaissance England, ed. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia & London, 1997), pp. 163-74 (p. 166).

Play including songs and verse. Extracts edited in James O. Halliwell, A Brief Description of the Ancient and Modern Manuscripts Preserved in the Public Library, Plymouth (London, 1853), pp. 212-36. Edited in full in Lady Mary Wroth's Loves Victory The Penshurst Manuscript, ed. Michael G. Brennan (Roxburgh Club, London, 1988[=1990]).

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MS of a work in Latin by William Temple (1555-1627), Sidney's secretary in Flushing, including numerous quotations from Sidney's Defence of Poetry, partly in Temple's own hand.

SiP 226: Sir Philip Sidney, Analysis tractationis de poesi contextae a nobilissimo viro Philippo Sidneio Equite Auratu

Discussed in J.P. Thorne, ‘A Ramistical Commentary on Sidney's An Apologie for Poetrie’, MP, 54 (1957), 158-64. Edited from this MS, with a translation, by John Webster, as William Temple's Analysis of Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry (Binghamton, NY, 1984).