Pierre de Ronsard

Born at the Manoir de la Possonnière in Couture-sur-Loir in 1524, Ronsard grew up in a household tied to the court - his father served Francis I as maître d'hôtel du roi. He studied at home, then at the Collège of Navarre in Paris from age nine, and later travelled to Scotland, Flanders, and Holland on what looked like a diplomatic track. A hearing impairment ended that, and he turned to serious study at the Collège Coqueret, where he became the acknowledged leader of La Pléiade, the seven poets bent on reimagining French verse. Between 1552 and 1578 he published Les Amours de Cassandre, Les Hymnes, Les Discours, the unfinished national epic La Franciade, and Sonnets pour Hélène - work marked by unusual language, dense imagery, and a restless variety of metre that earned both admiration and sharp criticism. He died in December 1585, his reputation still being argued over by critics like Sainte-Beuve long after.