In the tumultuous landscape of seventeenth-century English literature, few figures shine with such early brilliance yet fade with such puzzling rapidity as Abraham Cowley. Born in 1618 in London, this prodigious poet who published his first collection at fifteen, who dazzled the cavalier court and influenced an entire generation of writers, who was buried in Westminster Abbey beside Chaucer and Spenser, somehow slipp…
“The first minister of state has not so much business in public as a wise man has in private.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
Thomas Heywood, born about 1574 and buried on 16 August 1641, was one of the great working writers of the English Renaissance: a playwright, actor, poet, translator, prose controversialist, civic pageant-maker, and indefatigable observer of London life. He has never possessed the singular cultural monumentality of William Shakespeare, nor the sharply defined authorial reputation of Ben Jonson, yet this apparent eclip…
“Briefly, there is neither tragedy, history, comedy, moral or pastoral, from which an infinite use cannot be gathered.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Longing, Sensuality
