Jane Lumley, Baroness Lumley (1537–1578)

Jane Lumley, Baroness Lumley, née Lady Jane Fitzalan, was the eldest child of Henry Fitzalan, 19th Earl of Arundel and his first wife Lady Catherine Grey. The Earl gave Lady Jane and her sister Lady Mary a through humanist education, exceptional for that era, and his famous library of rare and important books was central to this effort. Between 1550 and 1553, when she was about 12 to 15, Lady Jane was married to John Lumley, first Baron Lumley, with whom she had three children, none of whom survived childhood. Lord Lumley was himself a scholar, translator, and book collector, who supported the literary activities of his wife.

The couple first lived at Lumley Castle in Durham, England, and then joined the Earl of Arundel at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, where Jane nursed her father through illness before predeceasing him.
While still in her teens,
Lady Lumley
was the first person to translate Euripides's drama Iphigenia at Aulis from the original Greek (or possibly from Erasmus's Latin translation) into English. She also translated selected orations of Isocrates from Greek into Latin. Her manuscripts were preserved in her father's library, which was joined after his death to Lord Lumley's own considerable library, and then passed into crown control in 1609. The play remained unpublished until the early 20th century.
Lady Lumley's translation of Iphigenia at Aulis also was the first known dramatic work to be entirely written by a woman in English, and the first known translation of a classical play into English by anyone. Lady Lumley was the same age as her first cousin Lady Jane Grey, who was briefly queen of England in 1553.