Anna Weamys
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Anna Weamys, sometimes referred to as Anne Weamys (fl. 1651) was an English author. She has been identified as the author of the prose romance A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia.
Writing
Weamys has been identified as the author of the prose romance A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia (1651), which appeared under the name "Mistress A. W."[1][2][3]
Her motivation for completing Sidney's incomplete work are unknown.[3] In her writing, Weamys presented a conclusion to the unresolved narratives with a multiple marriage ceremony for four couples at the end of the plot.[4][5] Her work also included some political overtones[6] and developed the plot of the character Mopsa, creating a parody of ballads and folk tales.[7]
A modern edition of Weamys' book was edited by Patrick Cullen and was published in 1994.[8][9]
Identity
Little is known of Weamys' life, but Patrick Cullen situates her in the context of a network of royalist sympathizers of the English Civil War (1642–1651) and interregnum, including aristocratic patron Henry Pierrepont, 1st Marquess of Dorchester and his daughters Anne Manners, Lady Roos and Grace Pierrepont, writer James Howell, printer William Bentley, bookseller Thomas Heath, and possibly poet Frances Vaughan (née Altham).[9]
Collins records in her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Weamys that she was probably born in the 1630s and may have been the daughter of Dr Ludowick Weames (d. 1659). He was a Church of England clergyman whose living of Lambourne in Essex, was sequestered and given to a puritan minister in the 1640s. This identify is derived from secondary sources, such as a congratulatory letter from James Howell to "Dr Weames" recorded in Epistolae Ho-elianae (1650).[1]
There is currently no information known about Weamys' life after the publication of her Arcadia, or when she died.[1]
Legacy
Weamys' work demonstrates how writing by Sidney was interpreted by his female readership and illustrate the development or prose as it became the to resemble the modern novel.[3][10]
References
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