SOURCE: Seelig, Sharon Cadman. “‘To All Vertuous Ladies in Generall’: Aemilia Lanyer's Community of Strong Women.” In Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England, edited by Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, pp. 44-58. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Seelig explores the community of women described by Lanyer in the poems of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum.

Pondering the question of literary circles in Renaissance England and attracted by the thought of a literary circle in Dearborn, I began to wonder, with Joan Kelly-Gadol, whether women had literary circles. They did, of course: one thinks of the circle of patronage created by the countess of Pembroke at Wilton, of the notables attracted by the light of Lucy, countess of Bedford, whom Donne and Jonson found the “brightness of our sphere”¹ (though I note that both these circles were inhabited chiefly by male poets); one...