The late sixteenth century in England was a period of considerable activity in vernacular poetry, with writers producing lyric verse in the English language across a range of forms and registers. Richard Barnfield was born in Norbury in 1574 and worked as a poet and writer within this broad literary period.

Barnfield was educated at the University of Oxford, and he composed his work in the English language. As a poet and writer, he was among those who practiced verse in English during a time when the language was being used with increasing ambition and regularity as a literary medium. He was born in Norbury and carried that formation through an Oxford education before pursuing his work as a writer. The facts of his life place him as an English-language poet with a university education, operating in the decades that spanned the turn of the seventeenth century.

Barnfield died in 1627. The surviving record identifies him clearly as a poet and writer, educated at Oxford, who used English as his literary language throughout his career. While the historical record does not preserve a detailed account of critical reception or specific honors conferred upon him, the basic outline of his life — born in Norbury, educated at one of England's principal universities, and active as a poet writing in English — situates him as a participant in the literary culture of his era. His death in 1627 marks the close of a life that extended from the final quarter of the sixteenth century into the early decades of the seventeenth.