John Florio
born c. 1553, London
died c. 1625, Fulham, near London
English lexicographer and translator of
Montaigne.
Son of a Protestant refugee of Tuscan origin,
Florio studied at Oxford. From 1604 to 1619
Florio was groom of the privy chamber to Queen
Anne.
In 1580 he translated, as Navigations and
Discoveries (1580), Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s
account of the voyages of Jacques Cartier.
Florio His Firste Fruites (1578), a grammar and
a series of dialogues in Italian and English,
was followed in 1591 by Florio’s Second Frutes
and by Giardino di ricreatione, a collection of
more than 6,000 proverbs in Italian. His
Italian-English dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes
(1598), for which he drew heavily upon the works
of Giordano Bruno, contains about 46,000
definitions. The second edition, Queen Anna’s
New World of Words (1611), was greatly enlarged.
In 1603 Florio produced his major
translation, the Essais of Michel de Montaigne,
which he revised in 1613. The freedom of this
version is questionable by modern standards of
accuracy, and the style is elaborate where
Montaigne is subtle and terse, but the book is
nevertheless thoroughly good reading.
