Sir Charles Sedley, fifth baronet, was born in March 1639 and died on 20 August 1701. He belonged to that brilliant and troubling generation of Restoration writers whose lives seem inseparable from the political convulsions, sexual freedoms, theatrical revivals, and moral contradictions of later seventeenth-century England. Poet, playwright, translator, conversational wit, courtier, landowner, and member of Parliamen…
“As the king has made my daughter a countess, the least I can do, in common gratitude, is to assist in making his Majesty's daughter a queen.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Irony, Joy
In the sun-dappled fields and ancient cathedral shadows of Kent, England, around the year 1553 or 1554, a boy named John Lyly entered the world. He would grow to become one of the most dazzling literary innovators of the Elizabethan age, a wordsmith whose elegant prose and witty comedies lit up the courts of Queen Elizabeth I and helped shape the very foundations of English drama and fiction. Though his birth date is…
“The finest wits are not the soundest judgments.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Sensuality
