Lady Mary Wroth - women writer to put back on the bookshelf
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2022
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Author of the first prose romance published in England in 1621, her reputation at court was ruined by her thinly veiled autobiographical writing. Visit the family home, Penshurst Place in Kent, and you can see Lady Mary Wroth's portrait, but New Generation Thinker Nandini Das says you can also find her in the pages of her book The Countess of Montgomery's Urania, which places centre stage women who "love and are not afraid to love." Scandal led to her withdrawing it from sale and herself from public life.
If you are interested in more discussions about women writers you can find an Arts & Ideas podcast episode called Why We Read and the Idea of the Woman Writer which includes a discussion of both Anne Bronte and Anne Dowriche. And there is a collection of programmes about women writers on the Free Thinking programme website
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can I just say? |
| 0:01.5 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | It's such a wonderful listen. |
| 0:05.6 | So nice. |
| 0:06.5 | There are loads more like it on BBC sounds. |
| 0:08.8 | Different paces, different heights. |
| 0:10.6 | The roof is buckling. |
| 0:11.9 | Where you can also listen to live sports commentary. |
| 0:14.2 | It's right foot goes for goal. |
| 0:16.7 | And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories. |
| 0:21.7 | The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession. |
| 0:25.2 | And she's had to live with that. |
| 0:26.8 | So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.7 | Sort of expecting that every week now. |
| 0:35.8 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:39.5 | Hello, I'm Claire Walker Gore. |
| 0:41.8 | Thanks for downloading this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast, which is part of a short |
| 0:46.4 | series looking at women writers to put back on the bookshelves. |
| 0:50.3 | Nandini Das is a new generation thinker on a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn academic research into radio programmes. |
| 0:59.8 | She studies Renaissance literature at the University of Oxford and her essay puts the case for dipping into the writing of Lady Mary Roth. |
| 1:07.5 | It was the winter of 1621. In England, James I was on the throne, and gossip at court was all about a book that had just been printed in London. |
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