Arthur Golding is best known for his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1565; 1567), which William Shakespeare used as a source. Yet his significance within sixteenth-century letters extends beyond this work to his translations of many classical and religious texts (particularly the works of John Calvin) into English. Golding's translations were widely read and discussed in literary circles of his day.

Golding was born in 1536, the second son among the seven children born to John Golding by his second wife, Ursula, daughter of William Marston of Horton, Surrey. John Golding was variously resident in London--he was an auditor of the Exchequer and was admitted to the Middle Temple in April 1520--and in Belchamp Hall in the parish of Belchamp Saint Paul's, Essex, where he was a substantial landholder. Neither the place of Arthur Golding's birth nor the nature of his childhood education has been established, although the removal of the family...