Abstract
This essay is concerned with the printed texts of two of Sir Philip Sidney’s books: the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella,published by the stationer Thomas Newman in 1591, and An Apologie for Poetrie, published by the stationer Henry Olney in 1595. While the current scholarly consensus is that Newman’s Astrophel and Stella was a “pirated” text, “suppressed” when the social elite (headed by Lord Burghley) intervened to prevent the book’s being read, the present essay challenges this interpretation through a new reading of the material record that offers a fuller account of the publication histories of both sets of sonnets, and of the origins of Olney’s publication. 
 
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