Poet and political exile
Elizabeth Jane Weston was born in England, but during her early childhood she moved to Prague with her brother, mother, and stepfather, Edward Kelley. Weston maintained ties to England, but her personal and professional life was in Bohemia.
Weston’s stepfather, Kelley, was an occultist and alchemist and an assistant to the famed
English magician Dr. John Dee. In the early 1580s, Kelley accompanied Dee to Europe, but after Dee returned to England, Kelley remained behind in Prague and entered the court of Emperor Rudolf II; Kelley convinced the emperor that he could manufacture gold, and the emperor rewarded him with a knighthood and property. However, Kelley eventually fell out of favor with Rudolf, either because of his failed alchemical attempts or his involvement in various court scandals, and he was arrested and imprisoned in 1591. Throughout these tumultuous years, Kelley and Weston’s mother still ensured that Elizabeth Jane and her brother received an excellent education. By her teens, Weston was fluent in Czech, German, and Italian as well as English and Latin. She was also a skilled calligrapher.
In 1597 Kelley died and his property was confiscated, leaving Weston and her mother destitute. In an attempt to provide support for herself and her mother, Weston wrote poetry, seeking patronage from nobles at Rudolf’s court. In 1603,Weston married Johann Leo, a lawyer at the imperial court. Leo actively supported both Weston’s appeal to regain her stepfather’s estate and her writing career. They had seven children in the nine years of their mar-riage. Weston died in 1612 at the age of 30.
Weston, known as both Westonia and the English Maiden in literary circles, first published her neo-Latin poems in a two-volume edition in 1602 with the help of one of her patrons, George Martin von Baldhoven. In 1608 she published a revised and expanded edition, Parthenica. Her facility in writing Latin verse demonstrates her learnedness as well as her understanding that it was the language most accessible to an international audience of humanist readers. Weston’s poems are characterized by their epigrammatic neatness, formalistic versatility and sophistication, and wide range of classical and contemporary allusions. Her subjects include religious meditations, colorful accounts of personal experiences, addresses to her mother and brother, and revisions of Aesop’s fables. Beyond their specific literary purpose, many of Weston’s poems are intended as appeals for patronage support; they also demonstrate the challenges that early modern women writers faced entering the public realm.
Jo Eldridge Carney
See also Education, Humanism, and Women; Literary Culture and Women.
Bibliography
Primary Work
Cheney, Donald, and Brenda M. Hosington, eds. and trans. Elizabeth Jane Weston: Collected Writings. Toronto: University ofToronto Press,
2000.
Secondary Work
Schleiner, Louise. Tudor & Stuart Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Whitney, Isabella (fl. 1567-1573)
Poet and first professional woman writer in England Arguably the first professional Englishwoman writer, Isabella Whitney wrote for publication without the subterfuge or apology characteristic of many early modern women whose works found their way into print. The author of works included in two collections and probably an epitaph, Whitney adopted a sensible and forthright voice through which she critiqued the gender and also financial relations of her time. Unlike many Englishwomen writers before her, Whitney did not enjoy the privileges of wealth and rank, and her position as a domestic worker in London of the 1560s provides a valuable window into the difficulties confronting working women of that time. Written in the highly regular metrics characteristic of midcentury verse, Whitney’s verse remains lively and expressive.
Most information about Whitney’s life derives from autobiographical statements in her own poetry and from facts known about her eldest brother, Geoffrey Whitney, who published a book of emblems in 1586. Isabella Whitney was born to parents of gentry or lower gentry rank. While her poem “Manner of Her Will” refers to a stay in Smithfield, her parents’ primary residence seems to have been in Cheshire. Sometime in the 1560s, Whitney arrived in London to enter domestic service, apparently as a companion to an unidentified gentlewoman. At that time, her two younger sisters and a brother, Brooke, were also in service, while a married sister, Anne Baron, was set up in her own household. By the time Whitney wrote A Sweet Nosegay (1573), she was no longer employed. Whitney is thought to have left London around 1573, presumably to return to her family’s house. Names appearing in the will of her brother Geoffrey suggest she may have married an Eldershae or Evans, although it is also possible that she predeceased her brother.
Isabella Whitney signed her initials “Is. Wi” to two of the four verse epistles published by Richard Jones in 1567 in a collection usually referred to as The Copy of a Letter, whose full descriptive title reads: The Copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her unconstant Lover, With an Admonition to al yong Gentilwomen, and to all other Mayds in general to beware of menns flattery. By Is. W Newly ioyned to a Loveletter sent by a Bacheler, (a most faithfull Lover) to an unconstant and faithles Mayden. While the word “copy” in the title suggests secondhand transmission to the printer, Whit-ney’s invitation to her inconstant lover to read her second letter reveals her assumption that her letters would reach print: “And now farewel, for why at large/ my mind is here ex-prest?/ The which you may perceive, if that/ you do peruse the rest?” Whitney’s first poem in this collection agreeably turns the tables on her former betrothed, who has recently married another woman. Rather than scolding him or berating her misfortune, Whitney positions his betrayal of her in a rereading of classical literature as a succession of betrayals of women by epic heroes such as Aeneas, Theseus, and Jason. Adopting the tone of a marriage counselor, Whitney catalogues the traits that an ideal wife should possess, pointing out that she, in fact, possesses most of them. In her following letter, “The Admonition,” she draws on her disappointing experience to advise young women to beware of the promises made by suitors. Probably influenced by the popularity of the complaints of abandoned women available in Turberville’s recent translation from Ovid’s Heroides, Whitney draws on classical literature for examples of male betrayals of women who love them. Whitney urges her female readers to exercise caution, to “always trie before ye trust.” Written not only to “Gentilwomen” but also to “all other Maids being in Love,” Whitney’s verse epistle may speak directly to the dilemmas confronted by young women who enter service to find a suitable husband, only to be confronted by predatory sexual attentions by faithless suitors. This collection balances Whitney’s accusations against men with two verse epistles by male personae who lament the infidelities of their female beloveds.
In 1573 Jones published A Sweet Nosegay, Or pleasant Posye: contayning a hundred and ten Phy-losophicall Flowers. These philosophical flowers refer to Whitney’s versifications of one hundred and ten of the commonplaces or wise proverbs translated in Hugh Plat’s The Flowres of Philoso-phie (1572) from writings attributed to Seneca. Following these commonplaces is a section titled Certain familier Epistles and friendly Letters by the Auctor: with Replies, including ten verse epistles written byWhitney to family members and friends, with three responses. A Sweet Nosegay concludes with her most anthologized poem, alternatively titled “The Manner of Her Will” and Whitney’s “Wyll and Testament.” Prefaced with a short poem describing the financial difficulties requiring her departure, this poem appears with the heading, “The maner of her Wyll, and what she left to London: and to all those in it: at her departing.”
Like her poems in the previous collection, the versified commonplaces of Sweet Nosegay represent useful advice, in this case on a series of topics from the right conduct of friendship, to caution in love affairs, to the careful management of goods. In her prefatory letter to the readers, Whitney develops the nosegay metaphor by describing these “flowers” gathered from Plat’s translation as protection against the infections of London’s streets. Whitney’s most innovative contribution to the commonplace tradition is her personalization of its use in her own experience. Earlier “har-vestlesse and servicelesse also” (Whitney 1982, 1.1-2 l.1—2), she had attempted to alleviate her dejection by reading Scripture, histories, and classical literature. Finding consolation only in Plat’s collection, she generously offers her versifications to readers to protect their moral health. More information regarding her personal history emerges in Whitney’s verse epistles to family members and friends, from whom she requests emotional or financial relief. Her letter to her brother G. W. avows her continued loyalty to her former mistress: “A vertuous Ladye, which / tyll death I honour wyll: / The losse I had of service hers, / I languish for it styll.” Entitled “An Order prescribed by Is. Wi” with the running title “A modest meane for Maides,”Whitney’s versified advice to her younger sisters in service cautions against the special dangers of believing groundless slander and, as experience has taught her, the use of contentious or reproachful speech referred to as “fleetyng” or “flyting.” Her letter to her married sister, Anne, represents her writing as enabled by her freedom from marriage and its household responsibilities. Reminding her that Christ himself was subject to slander, her friend C. W. expresses confidence that those who know Whitney will continue to believe in her virtue. Taken together, these letters seem to represent an attempt to repair damage to Whitney’s reputation, perhaps to gain another position. In addition to providing insights into the experience of her service in London of the 1560s, these letters invite a close personal relationship between the poets and readers, as vicarious members of an intimate social network.
Whitney’s concluding long poem, “The Manner of her Will,” in which she wills the goods of London to itself, well deserves the recent critical attention it has elicited. The poem falls generally into two parts. In the first, Whit-ney maps the commodities of London onto the city streets in an inventory that incites consumer desires for foods, weapons, plate (“with Purle of Silver and of Golde”), and especially clothing (“Hoods, Bungraces, Hats or Caps”; “French Ruffes, high Purles, Gorgets, and Sleeves/ of any kind of Lawne”; “Boots, shoes or Pantables”; and “sweeping Cloakes,/ with Gardes beneth the Knee”). Remarkably, the second part of the poem maps the prisons and other places where criminals, including debtors, are punished: Newgate Bedlam, Hol-born Hill, the Fleet, Ludgate, Bridewell. Identifying herself with debtors, Whitney claims that, if she had gained enough credit to accrue debt, she would herself have died in Ludgate. Taking nothing from London, she requests only a shroud and modest burial. The tone of this poem is complex, mixing unrequited love for the city, desire for goods, a lively sense of social injustice, with a resignation to an imminent departure represented as impending death. Few poems so successfully express the complicated responses of an early modern to the pleasures and pressures of a protocapitalist economy.
Finally, Whitney has also been claimed as the author of an epitaph,“The Lamentation of A Gentlewoman upon the Death of Her Late-Deceased Friend, William Gruffith,” collected in A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578) after publication in broadside form (Fehrenbach 1981). As the female persona observes, her mourning for her lover must remain anonymous “for feare of flying fame.” Whitney may well be the author of various anonymous poems in the numerous collections of the time.
Mary Ellen Lamb
See also Literary Culture and Women;Work and Women.
Bibliography
Primary Works
Martin, Randall, ed. Women Writers in Renaissance England. New York: Longman, 1997.
Stevenson, Jane, and Peter Davidson, eds. Early Modern Women Poets (1520—1700):An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001.
Walker, Kim. Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Twayne English Authors Series, 521.
Pages 152-162. New York:Twayne, 1996.
Whitney, Isabella. A Sweet Nosegay and The Copy of a Letter. Edited by Richard J. Panofsky. Del-mar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1982.
Secondary Works
Beilin, Elaine. “Writing Public Poetry: Humanism and the Woman Writer.” MLQ 51 (1990): 249-259.
Bell, Ilona.“Women in the Lyric Dialogue of Courtship:Whitney’s Admonition to al yong Gentilwomen and Donne’s The Legacie.” In Representing Women in Renaissance England. Edited by Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, 76-92. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
Berry, Boyd. “ ‘We are not all alyke nor of complexion one’:Truism and Isabella Whitney’s Multiple Readers.” Renaissance Papers (2000): 13-23.
Brace, Patricia.“Isabella Whitney, A Sweet Nosegay.” In A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing. Edited by Anita Pacheo, 97-109. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
Fehrenbach, R. J.“IsabeIla Whitney (fl. 1565-75) and the Popular Miscellanies of Richard Jone.” Cahiers Elisabethains 19 (1981): 85-87.
Fehrenbach, R. J.“Isabella Whitney, Sir Hugh Plat, Geoffrey Whitney, and ‘Sister ldershae.’ ” English Language Notes (1983): 7-11.
Hutson, Lorna. The Usurer’s Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions of Women in Sixteenth-Century England. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Jones, Ann Rosalind.“Maidservants of London: Sisterhoods of Kinship and Labor.” In Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens:Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England. Edited by Susan Frye and Karen Robertson, 21-32. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Philippy, Patricia. “The Maid’s Lawful Liberty: Service, the Household, and ‘Mother B’ in Isabella Whitney’s Sweet Nosegay.” Modern Philology 95 (1997-1998): 439-462.
Travitsky Betty.“Isabella Whitney,‘The ‘Wyll and Testament.’ ” English Literary Renaissance 10 (1980):76-95.
Wall, Wendy. The Imprint of Gender:Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
World History
