SOURCE: "Mary Sidney Herbert: Countess of Pembroke," in Women of Action in Tudor England: Nine Biographical Sketches, Iowa State University Press, 1977, pp. 103-35.

In the excerpt that follows, Hogrefe reconstructs Sidney's centrality as a patron in the world of Elizabethan letters by examining a selection of the many dedications that leading writers of the day composed for her.

Mary Sidney Herbert was perhaps the most self-effacing of the [prominent women in Tudor England]. She devoted her energy to helping others; her influence did not have breadth, but within her area of influence she was unusually effective. She was not actively concerned with extravagant entertaining, political affairs, exerting an influence at court, or promoting religious views in others though she was a devout woman herself. Her contribution was the encouragement of literature, not as a goddess inspiring writers from a throne above, but as a human being offering them...