Thomas North

Sir Thomas North (1535? - 1601?), English translator of Plutarch, second son of the 1st Baron North, was born about 1535.

Translations

Guevara

He translated, in 1557, Guevara's Reloj de Principes (commonly known as Libro áureo), a compendium of moral counsels chiefly compiled from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, under the title of Diall of Princes. The English of this work is one of the earliest specimens of the ornate, copious and pointed style for which educated young Englishmen had acquired a taste in their Continental travels and studies.

Related Topics:
1557 - Guevara - Marcus Aurelius

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North translated from a French copy of Guevara, but seems to have been well acquainted with the Spanish version. The book had already been translated by Lord Berners, but without reproducing the rhetorical artifices of the original. Norths version, with its mannerisms and its constant use of antithesis, set the fashion which was to culminate in John Lyly's Euphues.

Related Topics:
John Lyly - Euphues

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Eastern fables

His next work was The Morall Philosophie of Doni (1570), a translation of an Italian collection of eastern fables.

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Plutarch's Lives

The first edition of his translation of Plutarch, from the French of Jacques Amyot, appeared in 1579. The first edition was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, and was followed by another edition in 1595, containing fresh Lives. A third edition of his Plutarch was published, in 1603, with more translated Parallel Lives, and a supplement of other translated biographies.

Related Topics:
Jacques Amyot - Queen Elizabeth - 1603 - Biographies

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