George Turberville, or Turbervile (about 1540 - before 1597) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 poet, second son of Henry Turberville of Winterborne Whitechurch

Winterborne Whitechurch

Winterborne Whitechurch, also Winterborne Whitchurch, is a village in central Dorset, England, situated in a winterbourne valley on the A354 road on the Dorset Downs five miles south west of Blandford Forum. The village has a population of 694 ....

, Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

, and nephew of James Turberville

James Turberville

James Turberville was an English Roman Catholic churchman, bishop of Exeter from 1555.-Life:Born at Bere in Dorset, he was son of John Turbervyle, by his wife Isabella, daughter of John Cheverell. John was the grandson of Sir Robert Turbervyle of Bere and Anderston...

, Bishop of Exeter. The Turbervilles were an old Dorsetshire family, the inspiration for the d'Urbervilles of Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

's novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, also known as Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Tess of the d'Urbervilles or just Tess, is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British...

.

Turberville became a scholar of Winchester College

Winchester College

Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...

 in 1554, and in 1561 was made a fellow of New College, Oxford

New College, Oxford

New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...

. In 1562 he began to study law in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and gained a reputation, according to Anthony à Wood, as a poet and man of affairs. He accompanied Thomas Randolph

Thomas Randolph (diplomat)

Thomas Randolph was an English ambassador serving Elizabeth I of England. Most of his professional life he spent in Scotland at the courts of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son James VI. While in Scotland, he was embroiled in marriage projects and several upheavals...

 on a special mission to Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 to the court of Ivan the Terrible in 1568. Of his Poems describing the Places and Manners of the Country and People of Russia mentioned by Wood, only three metrical letters describing his adventures survive, and these were reprinted in Hakluyt's Voyages (1589).

His Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs and Sonnets appeared "newly corrected with additions" in 1567. In the same year he published translations of the Heroycall Epistles of Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

, and of the Eglogs of Mantuan (Gianbattista Spagnuoli, also known as Mantuanus), and in 1568 A Plaine Path to Perfect Vertue from Dominicus Mancinus. The Book of Falconry or Hawking and the Noble Art of Venerie (printed together in 1575) may both be assigned to Turberville. The second of these is a translation from the French of La Venerie de Jaques du Fouilloux (1561). The title page of his Tragical Tales (1587), which are translations from Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...

 and Bandello

Matteo Bandello

-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...

, says that the book was written at the time of the author's troubles. What these were is unknown, but Wood says he was living and in high esteem in 1594.