William Smith

Elizabethan Sonnet-cycles: Idea, Fidessa and Chloris (Dodo Press) William Smith

Michael Drayton (1563-1631) was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era. In 1591 he produced his first book, The Harmony of the Church, a volume of spiritual poems, dedicated to Lady Devereux. In 1593 appeared Idea: The Shepherd's Garland, a collection of nine pastorals, in which he celebrated his own love-sorrows under the poetic name of Rowland. The basic idea was expanded in a cycle of sixty-four sonnets, published in 1594, under the title of Idea's Mirror, by which we learn that the lady lived by the river Ankor in Warwickshire. In 1596 Drayton published his long and important poem Mortimeriados. Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602) was an English poet. He is particularly known for his Fidessa sequence of sonnets, published in 1596. William Smith (15?? -16?? ) was an English sonneteer, poet, and friend of Edmund Spenser. He participated in The Phoenix Nest (1593), England's Helicon (1600) and published a sonnet sequence Chloris; or, The Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepheard in 1596.