The foremost Elizabethan emblematist, Geoffrey Whitney discovered in that genre a means of maximizing his slender capabilities as a poet. Since the form typically supplemented an epigram with a picture and motto, successful use did not depend wholly on poetic accomplishment. Until recently, critics considered Whitney a mere translator and compiler of emblems, thus useful for documenting iconographical and other commonplaces of his culture. Nevertheless, his emblem book evinces its own shaping purposes and artistry through significant alterations and arrangements of borrowed emblems, and some original compositions. Hence Whitney's Choice of Emblems (1586) achieves its own significant position as a moralized verbal-visual treatment of human life, especially in the Elizabethan context.

Geoffrey Whitney's obscure origins have been best reconstructed by John F. Leisher, largely according to information included in the poet's Choice of Emblems and his sister Isabella's Sweet Nosegay or, Pleasant Posy (1573). Most likely born in London around...