Fage, Mary

Next to nothing is known about Mary Fage (fl. 1637), the author of Fames roule (1637). The volume's title page identifies Fage as ‘wife of Robert Fage the younger, Gentleman’. There is reason to believe that she was the daughter of Edward Fage (d.1638), that she married her cousin, and that she hailed from Doddinghurst, Essex. For all of Fage's relative anonymity, Fames roule is a text that centres on some of the most famous people of her day, members of the court of Charles I. (With the exception of the queen and her daughters, women are not alluded to in the work.) Robert Fage would seem to have had court connections, although it is not clear if either he or his wife spent much time in Westminster, and Fage's poems ‘give little evidence of actual familiarity with the politically powerful persons she lists’ (Travitsky 1999).