Henry Peacham (born 1578)

Last updated

The Complete Gentleman by Henry Peacham (1622). Engraving by Francis Delaram. The Compleat Gentleman by Henry Peacham 1622.jpg
The Complete Gentleman by Henry Peacham (1622). Engraving by Francis Delaram.

Henry Peacham (born 1578, d. in or after 1644) was an English poet and writer, known today primarily for his book, The Compleat Gentleman, first printed in 1622.

Contents

Biography

Son of Henry Peacham the Elder, a clergyman, Peacham was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. [1] In 1603, at the age of twenty-five the younger Peacham was a schoolmaster at Kimbolton Grammar School. In 1612 he published a book of printed emblems called Minerva Britanna, based on a manuscript which is believed to have been presented to Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1610. [2]

Peacham's The Compleat Gentleman is presented as a guidebook on the arts for young men of good birth. In it, he discusses what writers, poets, composers, philosophers, and artists gentlemen should study in order to become well-educated. Because he mentions a large number of contemporary artistic figures, he is often cited as a primary source in studies of Renaissance artists.

A representative passage from The Compleat Gentleman:

"For composition, I prefer next Ludovico de Victoria, a most judicious and a sweet composer: after him Orlando di Lasso, a very rare and excellent Author, who lived some forty years since in the court of the Duke of Bavier."
Page from Minerua Britanna or A garden of heroical deuises, 1612 Houghton STC 19511 - Par nulla figura dolori.jpg
Page from Minerua Britanna or A garden of heroical deuises, 1612

Notes

  1. "Peacham, Henry (PCN592H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. Elizabeth Hageman, Katherine Conway, Resurrecting Elizabeth I in Seventeenth-century England (2007), p. 73

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmund Spenser</span> English poet (1552–1599)

Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse and is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Purcell</span> English composer (1659–1695)

Henry Purcell was an English composer of Baroque music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Campion</span> English composer and poet (1567–1620)

Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet, and physician. He was born in London, educated at Cambridge, studied law in Gray's inn. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Davenant</span> 17th-century English poet and playwright

Sir William Davenant, also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil War and during the Interregnum.

Events from the year 1714 in literature.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1743.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1622.

George Puttenham (1529–1590) was an English writer and literary critic. He is generally considered to be the author of the influential handbook on poetry and rhetoric, The Arte of English Poesie (1589).

Polydore Vergil or Virgil, widely known as Polydore Vergil of Urbino, was an Italian humanist scholar, historian, priest and diplomat, who spent much of his life in England. He is particularly remembered for his works the Proverbiorum libellus (1498), a collection of Latin proverbs; De inventoribus rerum (1499), a history of discoveries and origins; and the Anglica Historia, an influential history of England. He has been dubbed the "Father of English History".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet</span> 17th-century English noble, dramatist, and politician

Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet, was an English noble, dramatist and politician. He was principally remembered for his wit and profligacy.

Peacham is a town in the U.S. state of Vermont

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmund Plowden</span> Member of the Parliament of England

Sir Edmund Plowden was a distinguished English lawyer, legal scholar and theorist during the late Tudor period.

<i>The Compleat Angler</i> 1653 book by Izaak Walton

The Compleat Angler is a book by Izaak Walton, first published in 1653 by Richard Marriot in London. Walton continued to add to it for a quarter of a century. It is a celebration of the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse.

George Stuart Gordon was a British literary scholar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubert Le Sueur</span> French sculptor

Hubert Le Sueur was a French sculptor with the contemporaneous reputation of having trained in Giambologna's Florentine workshop. He assisted Giambologna's foreman, Pietro Tacca, in Paris, in finishing and erecting the equestrian statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf. He moved to England and spent the most productive decades of his working career there, providing monuments, portraits and replicas of classical antiquities for the court of Charles I, where his main rival was Francesco Fanelli.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary and Matthew Darly</span> English printsellers and caricaturists

Mary and Matthew Darly were English printsellers and caricaturists during the 1770s. Mary Darly was a printseller, caricaturist, artist, engraver, writer, and teacher. She wrote, illustrated, and published the first book on caricature drawing, A Book of Caricaturas [sic], aimed at "young gentlemen and ladies." Mary was the wife of Matthew Darly, also called Matthias, a London printseller, furniture designer, and engraver. Mary was evidently the second wife of Matthew; his first was named Elizabeth Harold.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Early music of the British Isles</span>

Early music of Britain and Ireland, from the earliest recorded times until the beginnings of the Baroque in the 17th century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite. Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons, and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres, and masques in the Renaissance era, which would lead to the development of English language opera at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century.

Thomas Drant (c.1540–1578) was an English clergyman and poet. Work of his on prosody was known to Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser. He was in the intellectual court circle known as the 'Areopagus', and including, as well as Sidney, Edward Dyer, Gabriel Harvey, and Daniel Rogers. He translated Horace into English, taking a free line in consideration of the Roman poet's secular status; but he mentioned he found Horace harder than Homer. Drant's translation was the first complete one of the Satires in English, in fourteeners, but makes some radical changes of content.

<i>Book of Saint Albans</i> 1486 book published in England

The Book of Saint Albans is the common title of a book printed in 1486 that is a compilation of matters relating to the interests of the time of a gentleman. It was the last of eight books printed by the St Albans Press in England. It is also known by titles that are more accurate, such as "The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms". The printer is sometimes called the Schoolmaster Printer. This edition credits the book, or at least the part on hunting, to Juliana Berners as there is an attribution at the end of the 1486 edition reading: "Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes in her boke of huntyng".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Teft</span>

Elizabeth Teft was the author of a miscellany of occasional, topical, and political poetry. Although little is known of her life, her work has garnered scholarly interest.

References

Further reading