author
Richard Linche
An Elizabethan poet and translator, he is best remembered for Diella and for bringing classical myth into English prose. Though little is known about his life, his surviving work offers a vivid glimpse of literary culture in the late 1590s.
1 Audiobook
Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624)
by active 1611 William Barksted, Dunstan Gale, Richard Linche, Samuel Page
About the author
Richard Linche, sometimes spelled Lynche, was an English writer active around 1596 to 1601. He is known as a poet and translator from the Elizabethan period, and much of what can be said about him comes from the books he published rather than from biographical records.
His best-known works include Diella, a sonnet sequence, and The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction (1599), a book centered on classical mythology. Scholars have also noted his connection to the literary world around Richard Barnfield, which places him within the lively circle of late sixteenth-century English poetry.
Because so little personal information survives, Linche remains a somewhat shadowy figure. Even so, his writing has continued to interest readers and researchers for the way it blends translation, mythological learning, and the fashionable poetic styles of his age.