The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia

Description

“The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia” by Philip Sidney is a prose pastoral romance written towards the end of the 16th century. This ambitious work blends idealized shepherd life with dramatic tales of jousts, political intrigue, kidnappings, and battles. When a duke receives an ominous oracle predicting stolen daughters and a usurped throne, he retreats to a pastoral lodge—hoping to escape fate. Sidney significantly revised and expanded his original version before his death, creating two major texts that scholars call the Old and New Arcadia.

This edition of “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia” by Philip Sidney is a faithful digital reproduction of the public-domain text originally distributed by Project Gutenberg (ebook #70854).

Themes: Pastoral literature, English.