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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Philip Sidney
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(1554–86, kt 1583) England's closest approach to the ideal of a *Renaissance gentleman. Well travelled and well educated, he was at home in the great houses of the land. He was born at *Penshurst and his sister Mary, countess of Pembroke, lived at *Wilton. He wrote purely for the enjoyment of his own circle; nothing was published in his lifetime. Arcadia was mainly written at Wilton (The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia 1590) and is a long prose narrative in a pastoral setting. Astrophel and Stella was the first sequence of sonnets in English; its publication in 1591 made the writing of sonnets briefly but intensely fashionable.
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Sidney died after being wounded at Zutphen, in the Netherlands, from a bullet in the thigh. The famous story – that he refused a drink of water, telling a wounded soldier 'Thy necessity is yet greater than mine' – was current soon after his death.
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