Diana: Elizabethan Sonnet Cycle

HENRY CONSTABLE: DIANA: ELIZABETHAN SONNET CYCLE

Henry Constable's 'Diana' is one of the major Elizabethan sonnet sequences, reprinted here in an attractive new edition.

'Diana' is a sonnet cycle of love poetry, and some of the finest verse in the English language.

The book includes a note on Henry Constable, illustrations, and suggestions for further reading. Each poem has a page to itself. It's a useful edition for students.

Henry Constable was born in 1562; he studied at Cambridge (1580); converted to Catholicism around 1590; he worked as a spy in Europe, returning to England in 1603. He died in Liège in 1613 after being arrested in 1604 (after which he lived in poverty), and banished in 1610.

Henry Constable's 'Diana: The Praises of His Mistress In Certain Sweete Sonnets' was published first in 1592 (it contained only 23 sonnets). There is some confusion about which of the Diana sonnets Constable wrote (Constable was in Europe at the time), in the 1594 edition ('Diana or the Excellent Conceitful Sonnets of H.C. Augmented With Divers Quatorzains of Honorable and Lerned Personages'). In the later, 1594 'Diana', there are 8 decades of 76 sonnets. Some of the sonnets were written by Sir Philip Sidney (as indicated).

The identity of Diana is unknown, although Henry Constable did address some sonnets to Lady Rich, the woman who inspired Stella in Sir Philip Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella'.

Illustrated. Bibliography and note. ISBN 9781861711083. 108 pages.

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