Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Elviden, Edmund

by Alsager Richard Vian

ELVIDEN, EDMUND (fl. 1570), poet, was the author of three poetical works of extreme rarity:

1. 'A Neweyere's gift to the Rebellious Persons in the North partes of England; primo Januar. 1570,' sm. 8vo, black letter, pp. 20, 'printed at London in Powles Churchyard, at the signe of Love and Death, by Richard Watkins.'
2. 'The Closit of Counsells, conteining the advyse of Divers Wyse Philosophers touchinge sundrye morall matters in Poesies, Preceptes, Prouerbes, and Parables, translated and collected out of divers aucthours into English verse,' 1569, 8vo, London.
3. 'The most excellent and pleasant Metaphoricall History of Pesistratus and Catanea,' 8vo, London, n.d. The only known copy of the latter work, which is quoted by Todd in his edition of Milton, is in the library of the Earl of Ellesmere; the British Museum possesses none of the three books. Of Elviden's personal history nothing is known. From the closing lines of his 'Neweyere's Gift,'

This wrote your frende, a wyshynge frende
Unto his natyve soil,

it would seem that he was a north-countryman.

[Corser's Collect. Anglo-Poet. pt. vi. p. 341; Lowndes's Bibliograph. Man.]

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