author
Giles Fletcher
1548–1611
Best known for the sonnet sequence Licia and for a vivid early English account of Russia, this Elizabethan writer moved between poetry, diplomacy, and public life. His career joined courtly ambition with sharp observation, leaving work that still interests readers of both literature and history.
1 Audiobook
Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles: Phillis - Licia
by Giles Fletcher, Thomas Lodge
About the author
Born around 1548, Giles Fletcher the Elder was an English poet, diplomat, and Member of Parliament. He was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, and built a career that reached across scholarship, government service, and writing.
He is especially remembered for two very different kinds of work: the sonnet collection Licia and Of the Russe Common Wealth, his account of Muscovy based on a diplomatic mission to Russia in the late 1580s. That blend of literary craft and first-hand political observation gives his writing an unusual place in Elizabethan literature.
Fletcher also stands out as part of a remarkable literary family: he was the father of the poets Phineas Fletcher and Giles Fletcher the Younger. He died in London in 1611, but his writings continued to circulate long after his lifetime, valued both for their poetry and for their window onto Tudor England’s view of the wider world.