Diana (pastoral romance)

Los siete libros de la Diana de George de Monte Mayor
Title page of the 1602 edition

The Seven Books of the Diana (Spanish: Los siete libros de la Diana) is a pastoral romance written in Spanish by the Portuguese author Jorge de Montemayor. The romance was first published in 1559, though later editions expanded upon the original text. A sixteenth-century bestseller, the Diana helped launch a vogue for stories about shepherds, shepherdesses, and their experiences in love. One of its most famous readers was William Shakespeare, who seems to have borrowed the Proteus-Julia-Sylvia plot of The Two Gentlemen of Verona from Felismena's tale in the Diana.