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
William Congreve, born on 24 January 1670 and dead on 19 January 1729, occupies a singular place in English literary history: he was the most polished comic dramatist of the Restoration and one of the crucial artists through whom the exuberant theatre of the late seventeenth century became the poised, urbane literature of the Augustan age. His surviving dramatic career was astonishingly brief. Between 1693 and 1700 h…
“I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Satirical Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness
