The sonnet sequence Les Amours de Cassandre, first published in 1552, established Pierre de Ronsard as the outstanding French poet of his time. He was lauded by Montaigne, admired throughout Europe, and feted by the French Crown and foreign monarchs, including Elizabeth I. Based on a real relationship with Cassandra Salviati, the sequence combines the poet's love for an unattainable beauty with explorations of classical myth, the works of Homer and Ovid, and questions about the very nature of love, literary creation, human existence and the forces that drive the universe. Clive Lawrence's translation, the first complete English translation, captures the range and freshness of the writer known in his lifetime as 'Poet of Princes, Prince of Poets'.
