Countess of Montgomery’s Urania Title Page


The title page of the 1621 folio edition of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania
The title page of the 1621 folio edition of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania highlights Wroth’s status as “Daughter to the right Noble Robert Earle of Leicester”, and “Neece to the ever famous, and renowned Sr Phillips [sic] Sidney knight and Þe most excellent Lady Mary Countesse of Pembroke late deceased”. The elaborate engraving by Simon van de Passe depicts the Throne of Love, the first in a sequence of three ‘enchantments’ which Pamphilia and her beloved encounter in the course of the romance. The second enchantment places the ‘spell-bound’ characters inside a Theater, while the third and final one appears to brutally expose the hearts of the lovers in the Hell of Deceit (Lamb, Topicality 245).