John Lyly

John Lyly (Lilly or Lylie; /ˈlɪli/; c. 1553 or 1554 – November 1606) was an English writer, poet, dramatist, playwright, and politician, best known for his books Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and His England (1580). Lyly's mannered literary style, originating in his first books, is known as euphuism.

John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554, to Peter Lyly (d. 1569) and his wife, Jane Burgh (or Brough), of Burgh Hall in the North Riding of Yorkshire. The first of eight children, he was probably born in Canterbury, where his father was the for the Archbishop Matthew Parker and where the births of his siblings are recorded between 1562 and 1568. His grandfather was William Lily, the grammarian.

According to Anthony Wood, at the age of 16 Lyly became a student at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1573 and his master's two years later. In 1574 he applied to Lord Burghley for the Queen's letters to admit him as fellow at Magdalen College, but the fellowship was not granted, and Lyly subsequently left the university. He complains about a sentence of rustication apparently passed on him at some time, in his address to the gentlemen scholars of Oxford affixed to the second edition of the first part of Euphues, but nothing more is known about either its date or its cause. Wood said that Lyly never took kindly to the proper studies of the university. "For so it was that his genius being naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry (as if Apollo had given to him a wreath of his own bays without snatching or struggling) did in a manner neglect academical studies, yet not so much but that he took the degrees in arts, that of master being compleated 1575."

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