Soon afterwards, Harvey secured a place for his friend Edmund Spenser in the house of the Earl of Leicester, Sidney's uncle, facilitating an acquaintance between the young poets.
[1] Fox also noted similarity in the style and project of alleged Areopagus members, including Spenser, Harvey and Abraham Fraunce, leading him to conclude that Sidney was attempting to establish "a new school of poetry".
[4] By the early 20th century, scholars such as Edward Fulton and Howard Maynadier had begun to question the assumptions upon which the notion of the Areopagus as a formal club rested.
[1] Although academic interest in the Areopagus has continued to wane, the label remains as a critical shorthand for a group of poets that included Spenser, Harvey, Dyer and Sidney.
As literary critics use the term, it refers to the general project of these poets to broaden English prosody by incorporating French, Italian, Classical, and Anglo-Saxon models.