BIOGRAPHIES

Holmes, Martin. Proud Northern Lady: Lady Anne Clifford, 1590-1676 London: Phillimore & Co., Ltd., 1975, 181 p.

Sheds light on the development of Clifford's character, the circumstances that enabled her to stand up to the Commonwealth government, and her later reputation as a great wise woman.

Notestein, Wallace. “Anne Clifford.” In Four Worthies: John Chamberlain, Anne Clifford, John Taylor, Oliver Heywood, pp. 123-66. London: Jonathan Cape, 1956.

Offers a detailed biography of Clifford, from her early childhood to her death.

Spence, Richard T. Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery (1590-1676). London: Sutton, 1997, 298 p.

Full-length study that draws on previously unknown or neglected sources to illuminate Clifford's childhood in the royal court, her association with leading figures during her first marriage, her tempestuous second marriage, her concern for her daughters, her achievements as family historian, and her feuding with cousins.

Williamson, George C. Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery, 1590-1676: Her Life, Letters and Work. Kendal: T. Wilson, 1922, 547 p.

The standard biography of Clifford, written by a scholar with a literary rather than a historical bent; includes generous extracts from Clifford's letters and other documents.

CRITICISM

Acheson, Katherine O. “Introduction.” In The Diary of Anne Clifford 1616-1619: A Critical Edition, edited by Katherine O. Acheson, pp. 1-37. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995.

Offers a biographical context for Clifford's diary, situates the diary in relation to her other works, gives a bibliographical catalog of those works, provides a description of the surviving manuscripts of the diary, and suggests some critical issues that this information raises.

Charlton, John. “The Lady Anne Clifford.” In Ancient Monuments and Their Interpretation: Essays Presented to A. J. Taylor, edited by M. R. Apted, R. Gilyard-Beer, and A. D. Saunders, pp. 303-14. London: Phillimore, 1977.

Discusses Clifford's work restoring her family's castles, noting her choice of style and architecture and explaining how the royalist Clifford was even allowed to undertake such projects during the Commonwealth, in defiance of the new regime.

Hallett, Nicky. “Anne Clifford as Orlando: Virginia Woolf's Feminist Historiography and Women's Biography.” Women's History Review 4, no. 4 (1995): 505-24.

Makes a new and specific identification of Clifford as the source of the young heroine in Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando.

Lamb, Mary Ellen. “Tracing a Heterosexual Erotics of Service in Twelfth Night and the Autobiographical Writings of Thomas Whythorne and Anne Clifford.” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 40, no. 1 (1998): 1-25.

Discusses sexual intrigues between servants and employers in the autobiographical writings of Clifford and Thomas Whythorne and in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. “Re-writing Patriarchy and Patronage: Margaret Clifford, Anne Clifford, and Aemilia Lanyer.” Yearbook of English Studies 21 (1992): 87-106.

Examines the writings of Clifford, her mother Margaret, and the poet Aemilia Lanyer to show how these three women constructed themselves and their world and sought to rewrite patriarchy.

O'Connor, Mary. “Representations of Intimacy in the Life-Writing of Anne Clifford and Anne Dormer.” In Representations of the Self from the Renaissance to Romanticism, pp. 79-96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Maintains that the distinction between public and private must be modified in order to capture the situation of aristocratic seventeenth-century women such as Clifford and Anne Dormer, whose domestic lives cannot be separated from their roles in the dynastic politics of their families.

Rainbow, Edward. A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Right Honorable Anne, Countess of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery, with Some Remarks on the Life of that Lady. London: F. Royston & H. Broom, 1677.

Laudatory eulogy of Clifford that served to establish her posthumous reputation as a woman of great wisdom and generosity.

Additional coverage of Clifford is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 151 and Literature Resource Center.