Mary Wroth (1587–1651) was one of the most prolific and, arguably, the most important of the early modern English woman writers. Her life is of extraordinary interest and import because her writings occupy the fabulous, hazy borderlands between fact and fiction. Wroth’s fans, who have been waiting impatiently for this first full-length study of Wroth’s life and writing, will not be disappointed. Its 363 pages are jam-packed with information. Indeed, Hannay has assembled more documentary evidence about Mary Wroth than we have for almost any other early modern writer. Hannay’s tireless research and meticulous reporting appreciably alter our understanding of Wroth’s life and writing. Since she was the niece of Sir Phillip Sidney and Mary Sidney Herbert, countess of Pembroke, the daughter of Robert Sidney, later earl of Leicester and Queen Anne’s lord chamberlain, and the lover and first cousin of William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, King James’s Lord Chamberlain, and one of the wealthiest and most charismatic men at court, Wroth’s life was entwined with many of the period’s most influential figures, from monarchs and courtiers to writers and patrons of the arts.

In many ways this is an old-fashioned critical biography, more in the tradition of Walter Jackson Bate’s John Keats than Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World. As Hannay remarks in the preface, “To some extent any biography is a fiction; each biographer interprets the data that has survived to tell a story of a life. But the biographer must begin by collecting as much information as possible, while evaluating the veracity of the data itself” (xiii). Far more than many current biographers, Hannay believes in “veracity.” Her immersion in the archives (wills, parish registers, genealogies, account books, property titles, state papers) has yielded a plethora of factual information, while the wealth of letters written by Mary’s father Robert Sidney when he was away from the family serving as governor of Flushing or in attendance at court, as well as extraordinarily detailed accounts written to him in Flushing by his secretary Roland Whyte, provide tantalizing glimpses of the private lives of this remarkable family. The numerous references to the children, and especially to Mall, who was the eldest and apparently her father’s favorite, should help put to rest any remaining doubts that early modern parents were deeply concerned about their children’s lives and deaths. The letters stop, alas, when Robert Sidney was at home with the family and when his wife Barbara died in 1621. As Hannay reminds us, these gaps in the epistolary narrative should not be mistaken to indicate Wroth’s exclusion from family, court, or society.

Hannay has corrected a number of erroneous assumptions that have been too readily accepted by previous scholars. Wroth’s married life was not lonely. Robert Wroth was not an uneducated lout, and Wroth did not portray him as a “buffoon” in her writing. She was not banished from court after performing with Queen Anne in Jonson’s Masque of Blackness. Her later life was burdened by debts left behind upon her husband’s death in 1614, but these debts were not primarily due to Wroth’s (or her husband’s) extravagant lifestyle. Rather, they were inherited from her husband’s father, who incurred them while serving at Elizabeth’s court. Thanks to special annual dispensations from the Privy Council, Wroth was not in danger of being jailed for debt. Moreover, she paid off half of what she owed the first year and continued to requite the rest. After her husband’s death, Wroth did not live in isolation and penury. Instead, she remained at Loughton Hall, the luxurious home she and her husband renovated and furnished, and she continued to entertain family and friends until her death. Indeed, the date of Wroth’s death, in late March 1651, is Hannay’s discovery. Moreover, Wroth was not ostracized after the birth of her “natural” children Will and Katherine, the fruits of her affair with her first cousin William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. As Hannay demonstrates, the children were accepted and supported by the family: Katherine’s marriages and Will’s career benefited from the Sidney/Herbert kinship networks. Despite Sir Edward Denny’s irate claims that Wroth slandered him in Urania, the romance continued to circulate, winning accolades for Wroth throughout her life and after her death.

Since there are so many genealogies and backstories to keep straight, the narrative takes a while to gather momentum, but the story becomes far more engaging as Wroth’s life and writing begin to intersect. Hannay is principled, scrupulous, and exceedingly careful to remind us exactly where fact and fiction diverge: “Wroth’s tales often begin with an event or situation that happened to her or to someone else she knew, but then they tend to veer off into fantasy” (xii). Readers beware: “Wroth often added details that seem intensely autobiographical but are factually untrue” (xii). Hannay narrates more imaginatively and speculates more openly as the tale unfolds. Even though her own scholarly inclinations are more exact than dazzling, Hannay gamely considers virtually any plausible idea advanced by other scholars, such as Mary Ellen Lamb’s fascinating suggestion that Wroth conceived her son James with her lover, William Herbert, because her husband was ill and infertile (he reportedly died of “gangrene in pudendis”) and because in the absence of a male heir, his entailed properties, except for Loughton, would go to his brother—as indeed they did, when little James died two years later.

For discovering, organizing, and recounting all there is to know (at least at present) about Mary Wroth and her writing life—and I would never have believed that so much could be known—and for teaching us with such grace and intelligence that what we do not know can be as important as what we do know, always provided that we are careful not to confuse one with the other, scholars and critics owe Margaret Hannay a great debt. Her encyclopedic knowledge of Wroth’s life and works, combined with her generosity in citing and summarizing all prior Wroth scholarship, will make this book required reading for anyone writing about Mary Wroth.