Anna Hume: Printed Writings 16411700

Little is known of Anna Hume except as the translator of the first three of Petrach's Trionfi and also as the daughter of David Hume of Godscroft whose History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus she edited in one of its troubled versions. This volume reprints her translation of Petrarch's The Triumphs of Love - a series of six poems celebrating Petrarch's purported devotion to Laura. The poems tell a tale of Love's triumph over the poet, superseded by the triumph of chastity (in that Laura did not yield to Petrarch's love) which is in turn superseded by the triumph of death over Laura. Hume's 1644 translation is reproduced here with five related texts as appendices - an emblem and poem by Robert Farley; the translation of The Triumph of Eternitie by Elizabeth I; the translation of The Triumph of Death by Mary Sidney Herbert; illustrations from Il Petrarcha con l'espositione di M. Alessandro Vellutello...and the translation of lines 102-172 of The Triumph of Death by Barbarina Ogle Brand, Lady Dacre.

Thomas J. Roche Jr. is Professor of English at Princeton University, New Jersey, USA.