3 Review(s)

One of the few authors from the ranks of the nobility during the first half of the 16th century, Henry Parker, Lord Morley (c.1481-1556) is an undeservedly neglected figure, whose rehabilitation this volume sets out to establish. Morley was the first Tudor writer to render Petrarch's "Trionfi" into English verse, he set about imitating the "Italian Ryme called Soneto", and he translated Plutarch's "Lives" into English decades before any other writer attempted to do so. He presented his translations each year as New Year's gifts to those he wished to please, individuals as diverse as Henry VIII himself, the King's daughter Mary, and Thomas Cromwell. As these essays show, Morley was a kind of mirror of the ways in which the Tudor nobility functioned in a world wracked by faction and discord. The collection is interdisciplinary and features contributions by leading historians, cultural critics and literary scholars, including David Starkey, James P. Carley, Julia Boffey, A.S.G. Edwards, K.R. Bartlett, Richard Rex, Jeremy Maule and Suzanne Woods. It also includes editions of writings by Morley.