John Florio in a woodcut engraving from his 1613 translation of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne.

John Florio, whose long life coincided with the literary careers of Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, is best known today for his exuberant English translation of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. To his contemporaries, however, he was familiar primarily as a talented language teacher and an indefatigable compiler of dictionaries

This article in full comprises 2956 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

First published 28 November 2008

Citation: Hamlin, William M.. "John Florio". The Literary Encyclopedia. 28 November 2008.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1571, accessed 9 February 2010.]