Mary Basset

Mary Basset (c. 1523 – 20 March 1572; née Roper; also Clarke) was a translator of works into the English language. Basset is cited as being the only woman during the reign of Mary Tudor to have her work appear in print.[1]

Mary Basset's dedicatory epistle to Mary I of England in her translation of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History.

As the daughter of Margaret Roper and William Roper and the granddaughter of Sir Thomas More, she had an outstanding education; her tutors included John Christopherson.[2] She married first Stephen Clarke, but no children came of this union; after his death, she later married James Basset, by June 1556.[3]

Between 1544 and 1553, Mary produced the first English translation of the Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius, now surviving in a single manuscript in the British Library, Harley MS 1860, along with her translation of its first book into Latin. Her work is based on the edition published by Robert Estienne in 1544; her learnedness is reflected in her comments on the text's inaccuracies.[4] In 1560 Mary also translated Thomas More's De tristitia Christi into English.[5] Nicholas Harpsfield wrote that she had also translated the History of Socrates, Theodoretus, Sozomenus, and Evagrius, but no copies of these are known.[6] Her translations are characterized by the same engagement in contemporary political and ideological debates as can be seen in Thomas More and Margaret Roper.[7]

Mary's will of 1566 is strongly Roman Catholic, and mentions several objects that had belonged to Thomas More.[8] She died at London, 20 March 1572, at not yet fifty.[9]

References
  1. Demers, Patricia (Spring 2005). "Margaret Roper and Erasmus: The Relationship of Translator and Source" (PDF). WWR Magazine. Issue 1, Volume 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-06-08 – via CRC Studio.
  2. Hosington, Brenda M. (2012). "Basset, Mary Roper Clarke". The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature. doi:10.1002/9781118297353.wbeerlb009.
  3. "Bassett [née Roper], Mary (d. 1572)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/45808. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. Goodrich, Jaime (2010-09-01). "The Dedicatory Preface to Mary Roper Clarke Basset's Translation of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History [with text]". English Literary Renaissance. 40 (3): 301–328. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6757.2010.01070.x. ISSN 1475-6757.
  5. Hosington, Brenda M. (2012). "Translating Devotion: Mary Roper Basset's English Rendering of Thomas More's De tristitia ... Christi". Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme. 35 (4): 63–95. ISSN 0034-429X. JSTOR 43446636.
  6. Khanna, Lee Cullen (2001). Early Tudor translators: Margaret Beaufort, Margaret More Roper and Mary Basset. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 978-1-8401-4217-4.
  7. Hosington, Brenda M. (2011). "Translation in the service of politics and religion: A family tradition for Thomas More, Margaret Roper and Mary Clarke Basset". In J. de Landtsheer; Henk J.M. Nellen (eds.). Between Scylla and Charybdis: learned letter writers navigating the reefs of religious and political controversy in early modern Europe. Leiden: Brill. pp. 91–108. doi:10.1163/ej.9789004185739.i-540.19. ISBN 978-90-04-18573-9.
  8. The National Archives: PRO, PROB 11/54, fols 82v–83r.
  9. Mary Basset at the Orlando Project, Cambridge University Press
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