‘She was a beautiful Ladie and had an excellent witt, and had the best breeding that that age could afford. Shee had a pritty sharpe-ovall face. Her haire was of a reddish yellowe … She was the greatest Patronesse of witt and learning of any Lady in her time … there was so great love between [Sir Philip Sidney] and his faire sister that I have heard old Gentlemen say that they lay together’: thus, characteristically, Aubrey in his Brief Lives. The fifth child of Sir Henry and Lady Mary Sidney, of Penshurst Place in Kent; in 1577 married Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (then aged over forty); lived at Wilton near Salisbury and had three children. An important literary patron, she also oversaw the posthumous publication of her brother’s writings, translated, wrote a little verse of her own, and, most important, collaborated with Philip in translating the Psalms, completing the bulk of the work after his death. The psalms, described as her work of self-discovery as a poet, were widely praised and influential.
J.C.A. Rathmell (ed), The Psalms of Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke (NY: NYUP, 1963); Elaine V. Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987); Rivkah Zim, English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and Prayer, 1535–1601 (Cambridge: CUP, 1987); Michael G. Brennan, Literary Patronage in the Renaissance: The Pembroke Family (London: Routledge, 1988).