A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner STC 4450

This article is known to be incomplete.

A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner is the first English-language sonnet sequence, written by Anne Locke Prowse (c. 1530 – c.1590-1607). It was published in 1560 alongside Locke’s translations of four of John Calvin’s sermons on Isaiah 38.The twenty-six poems in the sequence gloss Psalm 51.

Publication history

The first sonnets of A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, with the psalm lines being glossed printed alongside corresponding poems. Folger Digital Image 1699.

Locke's sonnet sequence was probably written around 1559, the year of her return to London from exile in Geneva, and published in 1560, at the end of a volume that also contained her translations of four of John Calvin's sermons on Isaiah 38. Sermons of John Calvin upon the Songe that Ezechias made after he had bene sicke...Translated out of Frenche into Englishe was entered into the Stationer's Register on January 15, 1560 by John Day. A letter of dedication to the Protestant patron Katharine Bertie, duchess of Suffolk, precedes the translations and sonnets.

A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner and the Folger

The Folger holds one of two extant copies of STC 4450. The other extant copy is in the collection of the British Library. The Folger copy arrived at the library in 1938 with the purchase of the Harmsworth collection. Former owners also include R. De Coverly, whose signature is on the copy, and Alexander Moffat, marked by a bookplate.

The volume was featured in the 2012 exhibition Shakespeare's Sisters: Voices of English and European Women Writers, 1500-1700.