Anna Weamys

The title page of a 1651 edition of Weamys' continuation of the Arcadia.

Anna Weamys, sometimes referred to as Anne Weamys (fl. 1651) was an English author. She has been identified as the author of the prose romance A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia.

Writing

Weamys has been identified as the author of the prose romance A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia (1651), which appeared under the name "Mistress A. W." ^{[1] [2] [3]}

Her motivation for completing Sidney's incomplete work are unknown. ^[3] In her writing, Weamys presented a conclusion to the unresolved narratives with a multiple marriage ceremony for four couples at the end of the plot. ^{[4] [5]} Her work also included some political overtones ^[6] and developed the plot of the character Mopsa, creating a parody of ballads and folk tales. ^[7]

A modern edition of Weamys' book was edited by Patrick Cullen and was published in 1994. ^{[8] [9]}

Identity

Little is known of Weamys' life, but Patrick Cullen situates her in the context of a network of royalist sympathizers of the English Civil War (1642–1651) and interregnum, including aristocratic patron Henry Pierrepont, 1st Marquess of Dorchester and his daughters Anne Manners, Lady Roos and Grace Pierrepont, writer James Howell, printer William Bentley, bookseller Thomas Heath, and possibly poet Frances Vaughan (née Altham). ^[9]

Collins records in her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Weamys that she was probably born in the 1630s and may have been the daughter of Dr Ludowick Weames (d. 1659). He was a Church of England clergyman whose living of Lambourne in Essex, was sequestered and given to a puritan minister in the 1640s. This identify is derived from secondary sources, such as a congratulatory letter from James Howell to "Dr Weames" recorded in Epistolae Ho-elianae (1650). ^[1]

There is currently no information known about Weamys' life after the publication of her Arcadia, or when she died. ^[1]

Legacy

Weamys' work demonstrates how writing by Sidney was interpreted by his female readership and illustrate the development or prose as it became the to resemble the modern novel. ^{[3] [10]}

References

1. Collins, Jane (23 September 2004). "Weamys, Anna (fl. 1650–1651), author". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
2. Richards, Jennifer (April 1995). "Anna Weamys's A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's 'Arcadia". Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies. 12 (2): 20–24. Archived from the original on 14 December 2014. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
3. Mitchell, Marea (2 December 2017). Anna Weamys: Printed Writings 1641–1700: Series II, Part Three, Volume 7 (1 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315262499. ISBN   978-1-315-26249-9.
4. Hattaway, Michael (15 April 2008). A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture. John Wiley & Sons. p. 323. ISBN   978-0-470-99872-4.
5. Sarkar, Debapriya (4 April 2023). Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 115. ISBN   978-1-5128-2336-3.
6. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Second Edition: Concise Edition. Broadview Press. p. 487.
7. Knoppers, Laura Lunger (8 October 2009). The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women's Writing. Cambridge University Press. p. 279. ISBN   978-0-521-88527-0.
8. Weamys, Anna (1994). Cullen, Patrick Colborn (ed.). A continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" . New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780195078848.
9. Cullen, Patrick Colborn (1998). "Anna Weamys". In Schlueter, Paul; Schlueter, June (eds.). An encyclopedia of British women writers (Rev. and expanded ed.). New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. ISBN   0813525438.
10. DeZur, Kathryn (2013). Gender, Interpretation, and Political Rule in Sidney's Arcadia. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. xxix. ISBN   978-1-61149-418-1.