Richard Linche

Richard Linche was an English poet and translator who flourished in the late Elizabethan period, with records placing his activity roughly between 1596 and 1601. He is most closely associated with Diella, a sonnet sequence that helped secure his reputation among readers of early modern poetry.

His known works show a writer interested in both lyrical love poetry and learned translation. He translated The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction into English in 1599, a book centered on classical mythology, and he is also linked with other prose and poetic works from the same short period of activity.

Although not much is known about his personal life, Linche remains of interest to scholars because his writing reflects the tastes and literary debates of the 1590s. What survives suggests a versatile author moving between sonnets, mythology, and translation at a lively moment in English literary history.