Thomas Stanley (author)

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Sir Thomas Stanley
Catherine Killigrew

Sir Thomas Stanley (1625 – 12 April 1678) was an English author and translator.

Life

He was born in

Pembroke Hall. In 1641, he took his M.A. degree, but seems by that time to have proceeded to Oxford.[1] He subsequently embarked on a legal career, entering the Middle Temple in 1664 to study law.[2]

He was wealthy, married early, and travelled much in Europe. He was the friend and companion, and at need the helper, of many poets, and was himself both a writer and a translator of verse. His portrait was painted by Sir Peter Lely and by Sir Godfrey Kneller; in all he was painted at least fifteen times.

Writing

Stanley is the last of the

Joannes Secundus, Góngora and Giambattista Marino
.

Stanley's major work was The History of Philosophy, a series of critical biographies of philosophers, beginning with

Jean Le Clerc (Amsterdam, 1690). The three earlier volumes were published in an enlarged Latin version by Gottfried Olearius (Leipzig, 1711). In 1664 Stanley published in folio a monumental edition of the text of Aeschylus. Richard Bentley is said to have appreciated his scholarship, and to have made use of Stanley's notes, on Callimachus
.

Works

History of philosophy, 1731
  • Poems (1647)
  • Aurora and the Prince, from the Spanish of Juan Pérez de Montalbán; with Oronta, the Cyprian Virgin, from the Italian of Girolamo Preti (1647)[3]
  • Europa, Cupid Crucified, Venus Vigils (1649)
  • Anacreon; Bion; Moschus; Kisses by Secundus..., a volume of translations (1651)
  • The History of Philosophy (London, Humphrey Moseley and Thomas Dring) in 1655, three volumes, (1655, 1656, 1660); a fourth was published in 1662.
  • "Psalterium Carolinum: The Devotions of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes And Sufferings" (1657), a verse rendering of the Eikon Basilike with music by John Wilson.
  • Poems (1814) edited by
    Samuel Egerton Brydges
  • Anacreon (1883) translation, edited by
    A. H. Bullen
    (with Greek original)

Family and death

Stanley's first wife was Dorothy Emyon, daughter and coheir of Sir James Emyon, of Flore, Northamptonshire, with issue Thomas Stanley (1650 – death unknown).

After Dorothy's death, Stanley married

Cumberlow
in 1689.

Notes

  1. ^ "Stanley, Thomas (STNY639T)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. ^ Hutchinson, John. A Catalogue of Notable Middle Templars: With Brief Biographical Notices. p. 233.
  3. ^ London: printed for Humphrey Moseley, at the signe of the Princes Armes in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1647
  4. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26281. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)

References

External links
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