Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586), was an English author, courtier, and soldier. He became famous for his literary criticism, prose fiction, and poetry.
In The Defence of Poesie (1580?), Sidney championed “right” poetry—that is, fiction—against a variety of its enemies. This was the first major literary criticism in English. Sidney opposed the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth I and the Duke of Anjou in 1580. He went into temporary retirement at the home of his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke. For her amusement, he wrote a romantic prose and verse narrative called Arcadia (1580). He later made major revisions, but the countess edited the work into its final form.
Sidney’s greatest work is Astrophel and Stella, which consists of 108 sonnets and 11 songs. This sequence—written in the 1580’s—is one of the great works produced during the Elizabethan fashion for sonnet cycles.
Sidney was born on Nov. 30, 1554, in Penshurst in Kent. He traveled widely and was popular at court. In 1585, Sidney became governor of Flushing in the Netherlands. He died of a wound in battle there on Oct. 17, 1586.
