THE POEMS OF ISABELLA WHITNEY: A CRITICAL EDITION by ...

ut she was clearly familiar with both classical and
contemporary literature. She wrote of reading the
scriptures, histories, Ovid, Virgil, and Mantuan. She was
knowledgable about classical mythology (Aeneas and Dido,
Theseus and Ariadne, Jason and Medea, and others), and about
the stories which had grown up around the Trojan War (Paris
and Helen, Troilus and Cressida, Sinon). Her poems contain
allusions to stories told in Chaucer, Gower, and Ovid
(Lucrece, Pyramus and Thisbe, Hero and Leander), and in her
dedicatory letter to George Mainwaring, she refers to four
stories told in Plutarch's Lives, which did not exist in a
good English translation until Thomas North's of 1579, six
years after the poems of A Sweet Nosgay. The variety found
in her verse forms (ballad meter, rhyme royal, short
measure, and others) would indicate that she was also
familiar with the experimentation taking place in
contemporary English poetry. While it is indeed possible
that she had little formal education, her statement that she
"learning lackt" is evidently more modesty than truth.
Whitney's London Years
She apparently lived for some time in London, perhaps
at first with her parents (she states in her "Wyll" that her
parents lived at Smithfield, outside London, 11. 268-269),
and later in Abchurch Lane (the address given in her
dedication to A Sweet Nosgay). If her parents did live in
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