Sir Thomas Elyot's Latin-English dictionary became the leading work of its kind. Gabriele Stein examines its principles, methods, and organization, and the texts and authors Elyot used as sources. She considers the book's impact on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dictionaries and assesses its place in Renaissance lexicography.

Sir Thomas Elyot's Latin-English dictionary, published in 1538, became the leading work of its kind in England. Gabriele Stein describes this pioneering work, exploring its inner structure and workings, its impact on contemporary scholarship, and its later influence. The author opens with an account of Elyots life and publications. Sir Thomas Elyot (c. 1490-1546) was a humanist scholar and intellectual friend of Sir Thomas More. He was employed by Thomas Cromwell in diplomatic and official capacities that did more to impoverish than enrich him, and he sought to increase his income with writing. His treatise on moral philosophy, The Boke named the Governour, was published in 1531, and dedicated to Henry VIII. His popular treatise on medicine, The Castell of Helth, published some years later, went through seventeen editions. Professor Stein then considers how and why Elyot decided to compile a Latin-English dictionary. She looks at the guiding principles, the organization he devised, and the authors and texts he used as sources. She examines the books importance for the historical study of English, noting the lexical regionalisms and items of vulgar usage in the Promptuorum parvulorum and the dictionaries of Palsgrave and Elyot before discussing Elyots linking of lemma and gloss, and use of generic reference points. She explains how Elyot translated and defined the Latin headwords and compares his practice with his predecessors. The author ends with a detailed assessment of Elyots impact on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dictionaries and his place in Renaissance lexicography. Her exploration of the work of an outstanding sixteenth-century scholar will interest historians of the English language, lexicography, and the intellectual climate of Tudor England.

This volume provides the first modern scholarly editions of four works on the rhetoric of counsel by Sir Thomas Elyot (1490-1546), humanist scholar and advisor to Henry VIII of England. The Doctrinal of Princes, a translation of Isocrates’ To Nicocles, and probably the earliest English book translated directly from Greek into English, consists of a collection of aphorisms, all advising moderation, addressed to monarchs. Pasquill the Playne, the first English pasquinade, is a comic dialogue on the ethical challenges involved in counseling a prince. Of That Knowledge Which Maketh a Wise Man is a direct imitation of a Platonic dialogue, in which Plato’s confrontation with the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius is given dramatic form. A third dialogue, The Defense of Good Women, is the first printed English book that argues for the moral and political equality of women to men. Included in the volume are a general introduction to Elyot’s life and political career, extensive critical introductions to each of the texts, full recordings of the variations between printed editions, and substantive notes.

Thomas Elyot's Image of Governance is an English-language version of the matter of Thomas More's Utopia: a tract de optimo statu reipublicae, likewise replete with imagined 'dialogues of counsel'; but in an anti-utopian, monarchist perspective, calculated to appeal to Henry VIII. Moreover, Image of Governance is not imaginary but historical, translated from the late antique Latin Historia augusta. The present book provides critical editions of Elyot's political writings other than the Governour, all of which are or incorporate extensive translations of ancient Greek and Latin writings, like the Image of Governance. In these related 'Dialogues of Counsel', Elyot takes ancient historical cases — Plato's sale into slavery by Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse, for example; or the life of the West Asian emperor Zenobia, a woman under patriarchy; or the advice of the Attic orator Isocrates to King Nicocles of Salamis; or the failed but ambitious late Roman imperiate of Alexander Severus; et cetera — and dramatises them, by means of the sort of Lucianic dialogue that Erasmus had used for the Praise of Folly (More too), except in the vernacular, for a relatively broader, more popular English audience.

This is the first of three volumes offering a new history of lexicography in and beyond the early modern British Isles. This volume focuses on the period from the end of the Middle Ages to the year 1600, exploring the first printed dictionaries, Latin and foreign language dictionaries, and specialized English wordlists.

"Sir Thomas Elyot (c. 1490? 26 March 1546) was an English diplomat and scholar ... Elyot received little reward for his services to the state, but his scholarship and his books were held in high esteem by his contemporaries. Thomas Elyot was a supporter of the humanists ideas concerning the education of women, writing in support of learned women, he published the "Defence of Good Women." In this writing he supported Thomas More and other humanist authors' ideals of educated wives who would be able to provide intellectual companionship for their husbands and educated moral training for their children."--Wikipedia.