14 Aemelia Lanyer
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malia Lanyer or Emilia Lanier (1569 – 1645) is sometimes said to be the first English woman to publish a printed book, though she was in fact preceded by Isabella Whitney. Nevertheless Lanyer was one of the first British women to assert her status as a professional writer, though her book of poems Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, published in 1611 – the same year as the King James Bible – when Lanyer was forty-two, is advertised as being by a wife, rather than just a woman.
‘Written by Mistress Æmilia Lanyer, Wife to Captain Alfonso Lanyer, Servant to the King’s Majesty.’ The book is addressed, like Jane Anger’s, specifically to women and dedicated to several female aristocrats, seeking their patronage woman to woman, begging pardon for her ‘defects.’ They include a dedication to Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset and ‘To the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty’. (The queen was James I’s wife, Anne of Denmark, a noted patron of the arts.) 86
