“The Description of Cooke-ham” is the last poem in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), a book which made Lanyer the first Englishwoman to publish a substantial volume of poetry. “Cooke-ham” is the first published country-house poem, predating Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst,” the more widely accredited poem of the genre. The poem was written between 25 February 1609, the day of Lady Anne Clifford’s marriage, and 2 October 1610, the date of entry of this poem in the Stationers’ Register.
Lanyer narrates in the voice of a first-person speaker (unnamed in the poem) who looks back on her days in the idyllic royal estate of Cooke-ham in Berkshire, England. The poem is inspired by Lanyer’s own stay in Cooke-ham, where she also enjoyed the patronage and company of Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, and her daughter, Lady Anne Clifford, in the early 1600s. “Cooke-ham” is structured around two flashbacks—the first to the day of the countess's arrival in the estate, and the second to the day she left—framed by the speaker’s reflections on her literary career, her relationship with the Cliffords, and her own departure from the estate.
A pastoral ode written in heroic couplets and iambic pentameter, “Cooke-ham” raises questions about class, gender, and power. This early feminist text invites its readers to think specifically about female authorship and intimacy in early modern England. These themes also connect the poem to the broader collection of poetry and prose in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, in which Lanyer analyzes and reimagines Christianity, English history, and aristocratic culture from a feminist perspective.
