Proper noun
Gloriana
- Sobriquet of Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland.
1924 February 23, J[ames] D[avid] Symon, “Books of the Day”, in The Illustrated London News, London: The Illustrated London News and Sketch, Ltd., page 321, column 1:In “The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth” (The Bodley Head; 16s.), Mr. Chamberlin deals very faithfully with a scandal that has nothing to do with sixteenth-century gossip about the Queen’s morals. It is a purely academic outrage: Froude’s Bowdlerisations of Gloriana’s good things, which the historian paraphrased loosely when he should have transcribed them accurately.
1977, Roy Strong, “Introduction: The Last Pageant”, in The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry, Berkeley, Calif., Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, part one (Three Portraits), page 16:The cult of Gloriana was skilfully created to buttress public order and, even more, deliberately to replace the pre-Reformation externals of religion, the cult of the Virgin and saints with their attendant images, processions, ceremonies and secular rejoicing.
1992, S.P. Cerasano, Marion Wynne-Davies, “‘From Myself, My Other Self I Turned’: An Introduction”, in Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance, Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, →ISBN, page 11:In Hymnes to Astraea (1599) John Davies characterised Gloriana’s rule as captivating her subjects with an authority based on honour and ‘straight rule’: […]
2001, M[eirion] J[ames] Trow, Taliesin Trow, “Machevill”, in Who Killed Kit Marlowe?: A Contract to Murder in Elizabethan England, Sutton Publishing, published 2002, →ISBN, page 150:After the early seventeenth century, such cruelty would never be seen again in England, but it was part and parcel of the reign of Gloriana and the gentlemen of the Privy Council kept it that way.
2003, David Loades, “The Great Queen”, in Elizabeth I, Hambledon and London, →ISBN, page 312:At first she was the aloof, mysterious beauty of the courtly love tradition, later the magnificent unattainable Virgin, Gloriana.
- A female given name.
1874, Benjamin W[oodbridge] Dwight, The History of the Descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass., volume I, New York, N.Y.: John F. Trow & Son, […], page 1103:After Mr. Smith’s decease, she m. for a 2d husband, and as his 2d wife, Dr. George Muirson of Setauket, L. I. (son of Rev. George Muirson of Hempstead, L. I., and Gloriana Smith, dau. of Col. William Smith).
1922, Union Electric Quarterly, page 20:The little stranger is named Gloriana Craig. She arrived on June 24, 1922.
2002, Mary-Lou Galician, quoting Brent (name changed), Sex, Love, & Romance in the Mass Media: Analysis & Criticism of Unrealistic Portrayals & Their Influence, New York, N.Y., London: Routledge, →ISBN, page 127:When I was the ripe age of 17, I met a girl named Gloriana at an out-of-state sports meet.
2009, Edith Reynolds, John Murray, Wicked Waterbury: Madmen & Mayhem in the Brass City, The History Press, →ISBN:Through an acquaintance with his mother’s neighbor, Robert Bourassa, he met a woman named Gloriana LaPointe.
References
Davidson, Peter (1998) Poetry and Revolution: An Anthology of British and Irish Verse, 1625–1660, Clarendon Press, page 566