Lady Mary Wroth

[4] At this time a likeness of her as a girl in a group portrait of Lady Sidney and her children was painted by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger in 1596, and is now on display at Penshurst.

[3] As a young woman, Lady Mary belonged to Queen Anne’s intimate circle of friends and actively participated in masques and entertainments.

More evidence of the unhappy union comes from poet and friend Ben Jonson, who noted that ‘my Lady Wroth is unworthily married on a Jealous husband’.

Mary Wroth joined the Queen and her friends in the production; all of whom painted their skin black to portray Ethiopian nymphs who called themselves the 'twelve daughters of Niger'.

There is no evidence to suggest that Wroth was unfaithful to her husband, but after his death she entered a relationship with her cousin William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke.

[10] Mary Wroth's alleged relationship with William Herbert and her children born from that union are referenced in her work, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania.

Although Wroth claimed that she never had any intention of publishing the book, she was heavily criticized by powerful noblemen for depicting their private lives under the guise of fiction.

Denny on the other hand provides a very negative critique of Wroth's work; he accused her of slander in a satiric poem, calling her a "hermaphrodite" and a "monster".

In 2019, Harvard literary historian Vanessa Braganza identified a copy of Xenophon's Cyropaedia which she found at a rare book fair as Wroth's based on a cryptic monogram cipher on its cover.

The discovery sparked public interest in Wroth's use of ciphers and her previously little-known status as the first female English novelist.