Emilia Lanier, also spelled Aemilia Lanyer, (1569-1645) was the first Englishwoman to assert herself as a professional poet through her single volume of poems, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611). Born Aemilia Bassano, she was a member of the minor gentry through her father's appointment as a royal musician, and was apparently educated in the household by Susan Bertie, the dowager Countess of Kent. She was for several years the mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, first cousin of Elizabeth I of England. She was married to court musician Alfonso Lanier in 1592 when she became pregnant, and the marriage was reportedly unhappy.

Lanier's volume Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum centres on the title poem, a long narrative work of over 200 stanzas. It tells the story of Christ's passion almost entirely from the point of view of the women who surround him. The main poem is prefaced by ten shorter dedicatory works, all to aristocratic women, beginning with the queen. There is also a prose preface addressed to the reader, comprising a vindication of "virtuous women" against detractors of the sex. After the central poem there is a verse "Description of Cookham," dedicated to Margaret, Countess of Cumberland and her daughter Lady Anne Clifford. This last is the first published country house poem in English (Ben Jonson's more famous "To Penshurst" may have been written earlier but was first published in 1616).

Shakespeare's "Dark Lady"?

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Ehm. Oxfordians beware? Aemilia Lanyer wrote the plays of Shakespeare: http://bit.ly/pVjeL #darkladyfail
moriainexcelsis (b.v.w.) Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:37:53 -0000
Ehm. Oxfordians beware? Aemilia Lanyer wrote the plays of Shakespeare: http://bit.ly/pVjeL #darkladyfail

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