Philip Sidney and his sister Mary translated the biblical psalms into some of the greatest lyric poems of the English Renaissance. This is the first complete edition for over forty years, providing the Psalms in an authoritative modernized text, with glosses and notes and an introduction setting the Psalms in their literary and cultural context.

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, (1561-1621) is now regarded as one of the considerable poets of her time, and The Sidney Psalms as one of the most important but now least-known works of the Elizabethan period. These verse translations of the Psalms were begun by Sir Philip Sidney, Mary's brother, and she completed the task which her brother began. The volume was crucial in her development as a woman writer. Fifty of the poems reprinted here are by Mary, and twelve by Philip. Designed to show that religious verse could be as well-written as the more celebrated love poetry of the time, these version are remarkable for their formal variety and stylistic virtuosity. They were valued by Donne, affected Herbert deeply, and helped to initiate the Metaphysical manner. `Though some have, some may some psalms translate, /We the Sidneian Psalms shall celebrate, ' wrote John Donne in praise of Mary and Philip Sidney's versions.`They tell us why, they teach us how to sing.' R. E. Pritchard, editor of this modern-spelling selection, has written extensively on Renaissance poetry. He was born in India, read English at Oxford, and is currently a lecturer in English at Keele University. He is editor of the Carcanet anthology Poetry by English Women: Elizabethan to Victorian.

Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature examines the powerful influence of the biblical Psalms on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature. It explores the imaginative, beautiful, ingenious and sometimes ludicrous and improbable ways in which the Psalms were 'translated' from ancient Israel to Renaissance and Reformation England. No biblical book was more often or more diversely translated than the Psalms during the period. In church psalters, sophisticated metrical paraphrases, poetic adaptations, meditations, sermons, commentaries, and through biblical allusions in secular poems, plays, and prose fiction, English men and women interpreted the Psalms, refashioning them according to their own personal, religious, political, or aesthetic agendas. The book focuses on literature from major writers like Shakespeare and Milton to less prominent ones like George Gascoigne, Mary Sidney Herbert and George Wither, but it also explores the adaptations of the Psalms in musical settings, emblems, works of theology and political polemic.

Psalms in the Early Modern World is the first book to explore the use, interpretation, development, translation, and influence of the Psalms in the Atlantic world, 1400-1800. In the age of Reformation, when religious concerns drove political, social, cultural, economic, and scientific discourse, the Bible was the supreme document, and the Psalms were arguably its most important book.The Psalms played a central role in arbitrating the salient debates of the day, including but scarcely limited to the nature of power and the legitimacy of rule; the proper role and purpose of nations; the justification for holy war and the godliness of peace; and the relationship of individual and community to God. Contributors to the collection follow these debates around the Atlantic world, to pre- and post-Hispanic translators in Latin America, colonists in New England, mystics in Spain, the French court during the religious wars, and both Protestants and Catholics in England. Psalms in the Early Modern World showcases essays by scholars from literature, history, music, and religious studies, all of whom have expertise in the use and influence of Psalms in the early modern world. The collection reaches beyond national and confessional boundaries and to look at the ways in which Psalms touched nearly every person living in early modern Europe and any place in the world that Europeans took their cultural practices.