Philemon Holland (1552 - 1637) was an English translator.

His father, John Holland, was a clergyman who fled England during the Marian persecutions. Philemon was born at Chelmsford, Essex, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He took a degree in medicine and moved to Coventry 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's Natural History, Plutarch's Moralia, Suetonius, Xenophon's Cyropaedia, and Camden's Britannia. There are passages in Holland's Plutarch which have hardly been excelled by any later prose translator of the classics.

External link

• Philemon Holland from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature.