XVII.—Elizabethan Translations from the Italian: The Titles of Such Works Now First Collected and Arranged, with Annotations. II. Translations of Poetry, Plays, and Metrical Romances

Extract

The first Italian grammar published in England, in 1550, written by William Thomas, clerk of the Council to King Edward VI. and one of the first Protestant victims of the succeeding reign, contains “a Dictionarie for the better understanding of Boccace, Petrarcha, and Dante.” The title indicates that the great Italian poets of the trecento were first studied by English readers, and Boccaccio and Petrarch are here named before Dante. Indeed, after a most careful search, I cannot find any Elizabethan translation of any work of Dante. The first English translation of Dante in the British Museum Catalogue is that of Henry Boyd, L'Inferno, in 1785, La Divina Commedia, in 1802.