A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Overbury, Sir Thomas

by John William Cousin

Overbury, Sir Thomas (1581-1613). -- Poet and miscellaneous writer, ed. at Oxf., became the friend of Carr, afterwards Earl of Rochester and Somerset, and fell a victim to a Court intrigue connected with the proposed marriage of Rochester and Lady Essex, being poisoned in the Tower with the connivance of the latter. He wrote a poem, A Wife, now a Widowe, and Characters (1614), short, witty descriptions of types of men. Some of those pub. along with his are by other hands.