Aemilia Lanyer

Aemilia Lanyer (born Aemilia Bassano, 1569–1645), the daughter of a court musician of Venetian descent, grew up in London and was for a time the ward of the Countess of Kent. She later married Alfonso Lanyer, also a court musician, and spent her last decades on the edges of the Jacobean court.

Her Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) is the first volume of original poems in English published by a woman who sought patronage. It joins a long narrative of the Passion, with a defence of Eve, to verse dedications addressed to the Queen and to the great ladies of the court, and closes with “The Description of Cooke-ham,” among the earliest English country-house poems.