Anna Weamys

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."{{cite web |last1=Collins |first1=Jane |date=23 September 2004 |title=Weamys, Anna (fl. 1650–1651), author |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/68376 |accessdate=14 December 2014 |website=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |publisher=Oxford University Press}}{{cite journal|last1=Richards |first1=Jennifer |title=Anna Weamys's A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's 'Arcadia |journal=Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies |date=April 1995 |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=20–24 |url=http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/research/publication/45621 |accessdate=14 December 2014 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141214172515/http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/research/publication/45621 |archivedate=14 December 2014 }}{{Cite book |last=Mitchell |first=Marea |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315262499 |title=Anna Weamys: Printed Writings 1641–1700: Series II, Part Three, Volume 7 |date=2017-12-02 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-315-26249-9 |edition=1 |language=en |doi=10.4324/9781315262499}}

Her motivation for completing Sidney's incomplete work are unknown. 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.{{Cite book |last=Hattaway |first=Michael |url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=egElT0MFNDMC&pg=PA323&dq=Anna+Weamys&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjByK3VguyMAxVBa0EAHdUJGXkQ6AF6BAgKEAM |title=A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture |date=2008-04-15 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-470-99872-4 |pages=323 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Sarkar |first=Debapriya |url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NpSnEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA115&dq=Anna+Weamys&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFzuCog-yMAxWsTUEAHSyGHSc4ChDoAXoECAQQAw |title=Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science |date=2023-04-04 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=978-1-5128-2336-3 |pages=115 |language=en}} Her work also included some political overtones{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UGxegEzVNJEC&pg=PA487&dq=Anna+Weamys&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFzuCog-yMAxWsTUEAHSyGHSc4ChDoAXoECAkQAw |title=The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Second Edition: Concise Edition |publisher=Broadview Press |pages=487 |language=en}} and developed the plot of the character Mopsa, creating a parody of ballads and folk tales.{{Cite book |last=Knoppers |first=Laura Lunger |url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wCS4IiOLU3QC&pg=PA279&dq=Anna+Weamys&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFzuCog-yMAxWsTUEAHSyGHSc4ChDoAXoECA0QAw#v=onepage&q=Anna%20Weamys&f=false |title=The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women's Writing |date=2009-10-08 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-88527-0 |pages=279 |language=en}}

A modern edition of Weamys' book was edited by Patrick Cullen and was published in 1994.{{cite book|last1=Weamys|first1=Anna|editor-last=Cullen|editor-first=Patrick Colborn|title=A continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia"|url=https://archive.org/details/continuationofsi0000weam|url-access=registration|date=1994|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=9780195078848}}{{cite book|editor-last1=Schlueter|editor-first1=Paul|editor-last2=Schlueter|editor-first2=June|chapter=Anna Weamys|last=Cullen|first=Patrick Colborn|title=An encyclopedia of British women writers|date=1998|publisher=Rutgers University Press|location=New Brunswick, N.J.|isbn=0813525438|edition=Rev. and expanded|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780813525426}}

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).

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).

There is currently no information known about Weamys' life after the publication of her Arcadia, or when she died.

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.{{Cite book |last=DeZur |first=Kathryn |url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XrWFGSUU93AC&pg=PR29&dq=Anna+Weamys&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFzuCog-yMAxWsTUEAHSyGHSc4ChDoAXoECAsQAw |title=Gender, Interpretation, and Political Rule in Sidney's Arcadia |date=2013 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-61149-418-1 |pages=xxix |language=en}}

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Category:17th-century English writers

Category:17th-century English women writers

Category:Women writers (Renaissance)

Category:Renaissance writers

Category:Year of birth unknown

Category:Year of death unknown