SOURCE: "Mary Sidney's Psalmes: Education and Wisdom," in Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works, edited by Margaret Patterson Hannay, The Kent State University Press, 1985, pp. 166-83.

In the following in-depth study of Sidney's Psalms, Fisken argues that, as a translator Sidney both respected the conventions of her era, which demanded self-effacement, and exceeded them with her poetic innovation.

Mary Sidney's verse translations of the Psalms began as an education in how to write poetry and ended in a search for wisdom. Through close work with her brother Philip's translations as well as painstaking revision of her own efforts, she slowly gained the confidence to develop an individual style which stressed the immediacy of God's power and presence and dramatized the quandary of the psalmist seeking God's grace in adversity. Eventually Sidney's growing confidence in her work encouraged her to...