Fraunce, Abraham (c. 1558–c. 1633)

English poet. His works include The Lamentations of Amintas for the Death of Phillis (1585) and a series of translations reprinted in 1591 as The Countess of Pembroke's Ivychurch, followed by The Countess of Pembroke's Emanuel (1591) and Amintas Dale (1592).

Fraunce also wrote Victoria, a Latin comedy, and two prose treatises: The Arcadian Rhetoric (1584) and The Lawyer's Logic (1588). He was among the group of writers who advocated the use in English poetry of classical metres; all his own poems are in hexameters.

He was born in Shropshire and educated at St John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1580. He was later called to the Bar at Gray's Inn. He enjoyed the patronage of Philip Sidney and of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, and was a close friend of Edmund Spenser.