Wroth’s private manuscript, printed here for the first time, shows her to be a greater poet — a more psychologically insightful, verbally sophisticated, and boldly original poet than scholars realized, while her carefully curated, re-conceptualized printed collection shows her to be a remarkably self-reflexive and critically astute writer. When the manuscript and printed sequences are read together, as this edition encourages readers to do, Wroth’s poetry looks more innovative, more erotic, and more shrewdly multivalent.
