English · 1554–1586
Sir Philip Sidney embodied the Renaissance ideal of the complete man — soldier, courtier, diplomat, and poet. His sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella inaugurated the Elizabethan sonnet craze; his prose romance Arcadia was the most popular English fiction of its era; and The Defence of Poesy established English literary criticism. He died at thirty-one from a wound received at the Battle of Zutphen, becoming a Protestant martyr and cultural icon.