Condensed Summary

Because this essay includes sound, which requires significantly more electronic "space" than text or image, I have had to abridge and also excerpt much complex material throughout this essay. For a fuller discussion of my Villiers attribution, readers may consult my recent essays in ANQ, my notes in Restoration and in Women's Writing, and my "Ephelia" profile in the Schlueters' Encyclopedia (second edition, 1998), all listed in this essay's Works Cited.

This essay for ReSoundings supplements my recent publications with the following new material: my proposed Key to Female Poems...by Ephelia (1679); my hypothesis for "Joan Phillips" as Mary Villiers's urban cover; my reading of the iconography of two of Van Dyck's portraits of Mary Villiers; Lady Mary's patronal status; and a sonic portrait by Georgina Colwell of a 1937 Ephelia setting by Dr Cecil Armstrong Gibbs. And, of course, this is the first globally-accessible, multimedia, and hypertext e-construction of the "Ephelia" subject.