SOURCE: “The Biographical Problem of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus,” in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1982, pp. 43-53.

In the following essay, Roberts questions the extent to which Wroth's Petrarchan sonnet sequence was based on her personal experiences.

Beginning with Petrarch's Canzoniere, the autobiographical elements of the sonnet sequence have remained a constant source of scholarly debate. Does the sonneteer transform actual experience into art? Should the sonnets be read as literary constructs apart from any personal or historical contexts?¹ These questions recur significantly in the case of Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, the first sonnet sequence to be composed by an Englishwoman. Although her collection was published in 1621, it has largely been overlooked by literary critics partly because it appeared in print long after the 1590s, when the popularity of the English Renaissance sequence was at its height. Yet her sonnets received acclaim from a...