Thomas Lodge

Abstract

Thomas Lodge was the son of the Lord Mayor of London, and was probably born in London. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School, Trinity College, Oxford, and Lincoln’s Inn. He soon abandoned law to take up a literary career in London. He published literary pamphlets, translations, plays, poems and many prose romances, the most famous of which is Rosalind (1590), which he wrote while on a privateering voyage to the Canaries. From 1591 and 1593 he sailed on an expedition to South America. He later became a Roman Catholic, and turned to the study of medicine; he graduated in medicine at Avignon in 1600, and two years later received an MD from Oxford. He divided the rest of his life between medical practice, literature, and travel on the continent.