author
Bartholomew Griffin
d. 1602
Best remembered for the sonnet sequence Fidessa, this elusive Elizabethan poet left behind a small body of work and a large sense of mystery. Almost nothing certain is known about his life, which gives his surviving poems an extra air of intrigue.
1 Audiobook
Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles: Idea, Fidesa and Chloris
by Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, active 1596 William Smith
About the author
Bartholomew Griffin was an English poet active in the late 16th century, and he is chiefly known for Fidessa, a sequence of sonnets published in 1596. The work contains 62 sonnets and belongs to the rich burst of Elizabethan love poetry that followed the popularity of sonnet sequences in the 1590s.
Very little about Griffin can be confirmed. Older reference works identify him as probably connected to the Griffin family of Dingley in Northamptonshire, and he has also been identified with a Bartholomew Griffin of Coventry who was buried at Holy Trinity there on December 15, 1602. A will proved in 1603 by his widow Katherine is one of the few concrete records linked to him.
That uncertainty has become part of his appeal. What remains clear is that Fidessa earned him a place in English literary history: not as a widely famous name, but as one of the many distinctive voices who helped shape the Elizabethan sonnet tradition.