The poems of William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke

Thesis

Writing in 1912, Sir Herbert Grierson, who had frequently encountered the poems of Pembroke while working on his edition of Donne, pointed out the need for a reliable edition of Pembroke’s poetry:

"A scholarly edition of the poems of Pembroke and Rudyard would be a boon. Many ascribed to them by the younger Donne in his edition of 1660 could be removed and others added from manuscript sources."

An attempt was made to fulfil this need in 1935 in a B.Litt thesis prepared by Miss Margaret A. Beese. At that time, however, the necessary manuscripts for such a study had not come to light , and Miss Beese was therefore able to attribute with certainty only three poems to Pembroke. Basing my study in part upon other sources, I have included twenty-four poems by him in the present edition.

The main problem of my study, as these statements imply, is to determine the canon of Pembroke’s poems. The only printed edition of his poems, which appeared thirty years after his death, was notoriously unreliable: over one-fourth of its poems were by other, well known seventeenth century poets. It could not be ignored however, and my approach to the canon has essentially been to attempt to ascertain where the attributions of the printed text might be accepted. This I have sought to do by determining the manuscript sources from which the edition derived.

[Please see pdf. for full preface.]

Authors: Krueger, R

• Publication date: 1961
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-6rnopyq1y
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: Oxford University, UK
• Language: English
• Keywords: canon; poetry; William Herbert
• Subjects: English Language and Literature