This conference, held at Penshurst Place, and featuring a Globe Theatre production of Lady Mary Wroth’s Love’s Victory, offers a unique opportunity to explore how site and writing connect in the work of the Sidney-Herbert family.  How does the architecture of the great house, the gardens and the estate function as a symbolic site of community for this literary coterie? How, in turn, do the plays, poems, letters and stories recreate the site, dramatizing it in fictive scenes?

The conference will explore how Penshurst Place operates as a repository of memories and tradition and simultaneously as a place of literary innovation (in sonnet sequences, lyrics, female-authored drama and pastoral romance.)

Proposals for 20 minute papers which engage with these topics are invited to complement talks by literary scholars including: Professors Michael Brennan, Margaret Hannay and Mary Ellen Lamb, Alison Findlay, Paul Salzman, Akiko Kusunoki, Naomi Miller, Ilona D. Bell, Dr Katie Larson, and architectural historian of Penshurst Place, Dr Susie West.

In addition to sharing ideas through papers and discussion, delegates will be invited to comment on the initial Globe Theatre production with the aim of planning a larger scale production in the future. A limited number of bursaries to support conference attendance by postgraduate students will be available, thanks to generous funding by the Society for Renaissance Studies.

All proposals and enquiries should be directed to Professor Alison Findlay at Lancaster University  a.g.findlay@lancaster.ac.uk rather than to staff at Penshurst Place or the Globe.