author
active 1596 William Smith
An elusive Elizabethan poet, known today almost entirely through a single 1596 sonnet sequence, left behind work shaped by the literary world around Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney. What survives suggests a writer closely connected to the vibrant culture of late Tudor poetry.
1 Audiobook
Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles: Idea, Fidesa and Chloris
by Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, active 1596 William Smith
About the author
William Smith was an English poet active in the late 16th century. Very little is known about his life, and even his birth and death dates are uncertain, which is why he is often listed simply as "active 1596."
He is remembered for Chloris, a sonnet sequence published in 1596. The work places him within the tradition of Elizabethan love poetry, and surviving reference material suggests he moved in literary circles connected with Edmund Spenser, whom he treated as a mentor, and with the Sidney family.
Because so little personal information survives, Smith's reputation rests mainly on his writing rather than on a documented biography. That scarcity gives his work a certain mystery, but it also makes him a small yet interesting figure in the rich world of Elizabethan sonnet literature.