Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland (1585–1639), née Tanfield, was an English poet, translator, and dramatist. Precocious and studious, she was known from a young age for her learning and knowledge of languages.

Life

At the age of seventeen she married Henry Cary, 1st Viscount Falkland

Henry Cary, 1st Viscount Falkland

Henry Cary, 1st Viscount Falkland ; son of a Hertfordshire knight; said to have studied at Oxford; served abroad; gentleman of the bedchamber to King James I; K.B., 1608; controller of the household, 1617-21; created Viscount Falkland in the Scottish peerage, 1620; lord-deputy of Ireland, 1622;...

 and over the next decades she bore eleven children, including Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland

Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland

Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland was an English author and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1642...

 and Patrick Cary

Patrick Cary

Patrick Cary was an English poet, an early user in English of the triolet form.-Life:He was a younger son of Henry Cary, 1st Viscount Falkland, by Elizabeth Cary née Tanfield. At an early age he was sent to France, to be brought up a Catholic...

. She was disinherited by her father for using part of her jointure

Jointure

Jointure is, in law, a provision for a wife after the death of her husband. As defined by Sir Edward Coke, it is "a competent livelihood of freehold for the wife, of lands or tenements, to take effect presently in possession or profit after the death of her husband for the life of the wife at...

 to meet expenses, and the family were in financial difficulties from thereon. Her husband abandoned her to poverty in 1626 and denied her access to their children when she made public her conversion to Catholicism. Despite several orders of the Privy Council

Privy Council of the United Kingdom

Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, usually known simply as the Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign in the United Kingdom...

, he refused her a maintenance in an apparent effort to force her to recant. She lived in abject circumstances, though she still managed to maintain connections with a constellation of politically prominent women. Her husband died in 1633, and she sought to regain custody of her children. She was questioned in the Star Chamber

Star Chamber

The Star Chamber was an English court of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. It was made up of Privy Counsellors, as well as common-law judges and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters...

 for kidnapping her sons (she had previously, and more easily, gained custody of her daughters), but although she was threatened with imprisonment there is no record of any punishment. Cary died in London in 1639.

Writing

Cary was associated with the literary circle of Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke

Mary Sidney

Mary Herbert , Countess of Pembroke , was one of the first English women to achieve a major reputation for her literary works, poetry, poetic translations and literary patronage.-Family:...

, and a number of writers dedicated various works to her, a testament to her literary reputation. According to her daughter's manuscript biography she was the author of a number of poems and translations, though all but a few of these works have been lost. She is best known now for The Tragedy of Mariam

The Tragedy of Mariam

The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean era closet drama written by Elizabeth Tanfield Cary, and first published in 1613. The play is the first work by a woman that was published under her own name. The play received only marginal attention until the 1970's, when feminist...

, the Fair Queen of Jewry (1613), the first original play in English known to have been written by a woman. She was also the first English woman author to be the subject of a literary biography—The Lady Falkland: Her Life was written by one of her daughters, probably in the 1643-50 era, though not published till 1861. (All four of Cary's daughters became Benedictine

Benedictine

Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...

 nuns at a convent in Cambrai

Cambrai

Cambrai is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department.Cambrai is the seat of an archdiocese whose jurisdiction was immense during the Middle Ages. The territory of the Bishopric of Cambrai, roughly coinciding with the shire of Brabant, included...

, France. The identity of the daughter who wrote her mother's life is uncertain.)

Works

• "The mirror of the world," a translation of Abraham Ortelius's Le mirroir du monde (1598)
• The tragedie of Mariam, the faire queene of Jewry. On-line edition at A Celebration of Women Writers
• The Tragedy of Mariam
  The Tragedy of Mariam
  The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean era closet drama written by Elizabeth Tanfield Cary, and first published in 1613. The play is the first work by a woman that was published under her own name. The play received only marginal attention until the 1970's, when feminist...
  
  , the Fair Queen of Jewry (pub. 1613)
• Reply of the most Illustrious Cardinal of Perron (1630)
• The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II (pub. 1680)
• The History of the most Unfortunate Prince, King Edward II (pub. 1680)