Philemon Holland was an English translator.

His father, John Holland, was a clergyman who fled the Kingdom of England

Kingdom of England

The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England...

 during the persecutions of Mary I of England

Mary I of England

Mary I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death.She was the only surviving child born of the ill-fated marriage of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded Henry in 1547...

. Philemon was born at Chelmsford

Chelmsford

Chelmsford is the county town of Essex, England and the principal settlement of the borough of Chelmsford. It is located in the London commuter belt, approximately northeast of Charing Cross, London, and approximately the same distance from the once provincial Roman capital at Colchester...

, Essex, and educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford

King Edward VI Grammar School (Chelmsford)

King Edward VI Grammar School, or KEGS, is a British grammar school located in the town of Chelmsford, Essex, England. It takes pupils between the ages of 11 and 18 — from Year 7 to 11 the pupils are exclusively male, although it becomes mixed in the sixth form .The present headteacher is Thomas...

 (where, more than three hundred years later, a house was named for him), before going on to Trinity College

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

. He took a degree in medicine and moved to Coventry

Coventry

Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...

 around 1595, where he practiced among the poor but devoted most of his energy to translating. In 1628 he was made headmaster of the local free school, but he served for less than a year. His last years were passed in poverty, though he was awarded a pension in 1635 by the city council of Coventry.

Holland was extremely productive, but his best known translations are of Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

's Natural History, Plutarch's

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

 Moralia, Suetonius

Lives of the Twelve Caesars

De vita Caesarum commonly known as The Twelve Caesars, is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire written by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.The work, written in AD 121 during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, was the most popular work of Suetonius,...

, Xenophon's

Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...

 Cyropaedia

Cyropaedia (Xenophon)

The Cyropaedia is a "partly fictional biography" of Cyrus the Great, written in the early 4th century BC by the Athenian gentleman-soldier, and student of Socrates, Xenophon of Athens. The Latinized title Cyropaedia derives from Greek Kúrou paideía , meaning "The Education of Cyrus"...

, and William Camden

William Camden

William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and officer of arms. He wrote the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.- Early years :Camden was born in London...

's Britannia. Holland's Pliny is sometimes superior (despite the antiquated language he uses) to the 20th century English translations commonly available, and there are passages in his Plutarch which have hardly been excelled by any later prose translator of the classics.

External links

• Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History (in progress, Books I‑III, VII‑XIII)
• Holland's translation of William Camden's Britannia (1610), with hyperlinks to the 1607 Latin edition.
• Philemon Holland from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature.