The Sidney Legend

Abstract Philip Sidney was famous for his death in battle in the Netherlands before he was well known as a writer. This chapter tracks the construction and significance of the Sidney legend of aristocratic heroism, focusing on the role of the legend in the reception of the Arcadia. The Arcadia was widely read as a ‘secret history’, a fiction thought to reflect high political affairs, and Sidney’s position in Elizabeth’s court and the significance of his death was correspondingly exaggerated. Later, however, increasing scepticism about the legend as well as the popularity of the Arcadia among female readers complicated both the personal legend and the literary reputation. By the eighteenth century, the idealism attached to Sidney’s legend was supplanted by the female legend associated with the Arcadia’s Pamela, whose name, through Samuel Richardson’s novel, entered the history of the English novel.