Lancelot Andrewes

Sheldon Goldfarb (University of British Columbia)

Ed. by J A Roe, University of York
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Dates

Born 1555
Died 1626
Activity 1575-1626

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Religious writer

Resources

Andrewes' Works

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Best known as a sermon writer whose prose was praised (and borrowed) by T.S. Eliot, Lancelot Andrewes was a bishop and court preacher during the reign of England’s James I. He was noted for his rugged, staccato writing style, full of elaborate metaphors and analogies, along with wide-ranging scholarship, and is often compared to the Metaphysical Poets of the early seventeenth century. The young Milton wrote an elegy for him, and others of his time praised him for his sermons, his piety, and his learning.

Andrewes was born in London, the son of a merchant mariner, and won early attention for his intellectual achievement. He attended Richard Mulcaster’s Merchant Taylors’ School and later won a scholarship to Cambridge, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and became a

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1804 words

Citation: Goldfarb, Sheldon. "Lancelot Andrewes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 April 2022 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=115, accessed 21 November 2024.]