The Correspondence C.1626-1659 of Dorothy Percy Sidney, Countess of Leicester

Dorothy Percy Sidney was born into a family full of educated women and contentious men. She married into another one. This edition of her letters is long overdue. Brennan (Renaissance studies, University of Leeds) Kinnamon (English, Mars Hill College) and Hannay (English, Siena College) provide a biography of Sidney and her place in the noble bloodlines of Early Modern England. They also place the letters against the background of the reign of Charles I and the Interregnum. The letters themselves are footnoted. Many of them concern the marriage prospects of their eldest daughter, the running of the estates and the building of their townhouse in London. Sidney's husband, Robert, was away from home for long periods, particularly in France, making it necessary that many family matters be discussed in letters. She also advises him on court affairs. There are some letters to other family members and acquaintances and a few addressed to her. Her will and the inventory of her books, all pertaining to Protestantism, are included along with family trees, a time line and a list of people and places mentioned. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Michael G. Brennan, Margaret P. Hannay and Noel J. Kinnamon have together edited Domestic Politics and Family Absence (Ashgate, 2005); and The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke for the Oxford English Texts Series (Oxford UP, 1998) ;and a modern-spelling edition for students and general readers, Selected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (MRTS, 2005). They are currently editing The Correspondence of Rowland Whyte and Robert Sidney, first Earl of Leicester. Margaret Hannay, Professor of English at Siena College, is the author of Philip's Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (Oxford UP, 1990), editor of Silent but for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works (Kent State UP, 1985), and editor, with Susanne Woods, of Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers (MLA, 2000). Michael G. Brennan, Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Leeds, is the author of The Origins of the Grand Tour (Ashgate, 2005) and The Sidneys of Penshurst and the Monarchy, 1500-1700 (Ashgate, forthcoming. He is also author of Literary Patronage in the English Renaissance: The Pembroke Family (Routledge, 1988); and has edited Lady Mary Wroth's Love's Victor: The Penshurst Manuscript (Roxburghe Club, 1988). With Noel Kinnamon he has published A Sidney Chronology: 1554-1654 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and has published extensively on Renaissance travel writings.