Turberville (Turbervile), George

(?1540-?1610)

   Born in Whitchurch, Dorset, he was educated at Winchester College and was a fellow of New College, Oxford. He belonged to an old Dorsetshire family, the D'Urbervilles of Thomas Hardy's (see entry) novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. In 1568 he was secretary to Thomas Randolph (1523-1590) when he was ambassador from Queen Elizabeth to the court of Ivan the Terrible in Moscow. Turberville published Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs, and Sonnets in 1567, and Poems Describing the Places and Manners of the Country and People of Russia in 1568. He translated the works of several poets, including Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18), Mantuan (1448-1516), and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). He was the first English poet to publish a book of verses to his lady, a genre that became popular in the Elizabethan age. Some of his original poems: "A Vow to serue faithfully," "An Epitaph of Maister Win Drowned in the Sea," "Of a Rich Miser," "Of Homer and His Birth," "Of One That Had a Great Nose," "The Louer Abused Renounceth Love," "The Louer Whose Mistress Feared a Mouse," "The Pine to the Mariner."

   Sources: A New Treasury of Poetry. Neil Philip, ed. Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1990. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Elizabethan Lyrics. Norman Ault, ed. William Sloane Associates, 1949. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson. John Williams, ed. University of Arkansas, 1990. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Faber and Faber, 1977. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Tragical Tales, and Other Poems: by George Turbervile (no publisher) 1837.