I've been looking forward to reading this work for years after dropping it once due to the complexity of the prose that made it too challenging for good old me. Ironically I am dropping it once again because I found the text subpar in terms of content and style, and after reading a variety of works written by pastoral authors I can assert that this novel is nothing more than a product of the Elizabethan society under the guise of a bucolic romance, a wannabe Sannazaro's Arcadia loaded with petty moralism and anecdotes about virtue and sin all too divorced from the real intent of the pastoral genre. Despite the impressive length of his work, Sidney drops the facade quite early in the novel and has no qualms about slapping 17th century quirks and literary tropes in his romance, which leaves us with a disappointing pseudo-historical Renaissance soap opera where respecting the importance of historical accuracy doesn't even cross the mind of the author. If this novel was written solely for entertainment purposes, it failed to deliver even that. ( )

Reprint with portions of the introduction removed ( )

Reprint with portions of the introduction removed ( )

Includes, with separate title page: A sixth book of the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia / written by R. B. of Lincoln's Inn Esquire. -- London : George Calvert, 1674. Includes Defence of Poesie, Sonnets, Astrophel and Stella, and A supplement to the third book of Arcadia, etc. ( )

Facs. reprint of the photographic facsimile pub. in 1891 by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Co. (ed. H. Oskar Sommer) of the 1590 edition. ( )