Brown Bag Talk

Thursday, October 2

A Bird of Diverse Colours: A Newly Discovered
Elizabethan Romance in the Conway Papers

Daniel Starza Smith
British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow, Lincoln College, Oxford University

In the 18th century, a bundle of Elizabethan letters was almost cast into the flames, only to be preserved, with a sniff of contempt, under the label "Letters of no importance." But within these letters survives an astonishing Elizabethan romance, which Dr. Smith is calling A Bird of Diverse Colours – a romance that is at once a true story and a literary fiction. A co-authored narrative of betrayal, violence, disguise, and sexual intrigue, this tale was both lived and consciously fashioned by a member of the elite Sidney circle of poets and statesmen, and a practically unknown female poet whose literary brilliance deserves to be better known. This presentation will set out the case for these "unimportant" documents.

Thursday, October 2
12-1 p.m.
Huntington Library, Seaver Classrooms 1 & 2