C. S. Lewis's remark in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (1954) about Philip Sidney's Arcadia that "What a man thinks of it ... tests the depth of his sympathy with the sixteenth century," is perhaps even truer of John Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and His England (1580). They were the most popular works of fiction in the sixteenth century: ten editions of each text saw print by the end of the century, inspiring dozens of imitators, although the phenomenon had largely run its course by the time Elizabeth died in 1603. As Merritt Lawlis says in Elizabethan Prose Fiction (1967) "It is as 'Elizabethan' as Elizabeth herself."

John Lyly was in many respects a genuine child of his age. His grandfather, William Lily, was one of the early humanist figures to bring the Renaissance to England. A friend of Desiderius Erasmus and John Colet, William Lily...