Aemilia Lanyer was a British poet of the 16th and 17th centuries, known as one of the first women in modern England to have her work published. She was born in London in 1658 to a moderately affluent Italian family and received a comprehensive education in her youth. After the death of her father, Lanyer spent much of her life raised by extended family, whose ardent support of her education would influence her later life and career.
Lanyer's mother would die when she was 18, leaving her an inheritance to survive on. Around this time, she became romantically involved with a nobleman four decades her senior. When she became pregnant, he left her a sum of money and abandoned her and the child. In order to support the child, Lanyer married her cousin, an Italian musician. The two would live a largely unhappy marital life, and Lanyer would suffer several miscarriages.
Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum was published in 1611, at which time Lanyer was 42 years old. Never before had a woman presented herself as a poet, and therefore the work has been considered highly influential. The work was much ahead of its time in its feminist stance, an each of the ten poems was dedicated to a woman in Lanyer's life. Lanyer also writes about religious matters in an atypical fashion for the time. She reimagines biblical event from a female perspective, notably the story of Adam and Eve, exonerating Eve who has been blamed for the wrongdoings in the story. She also writes about the wife of Pontious Pilate, the prefact who condemned Jesus to death. In Lanyer's writing, Pilate's wife begged her husband to free Jesus.
Despite their highly original and unique content, Lanyer's work did not receive much attention. She would not publish another work, and would instead run a boarding school to support herself after the death of her husband. Nonetheless Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and the life of Aemilia Lanyer have been remembered as landmark moments in the history of English Literature.
