John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, was born on 1 April 1647 at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire and died on 26 July 1680 at Woodstock Park, aged only thirty-three. Few English poets have acquired a reputation so vivid, so unstable, and so inseparable from scandal. Rochester has been remembered as a court rake, libertine, seducer, duelist, drunkard, satirist, skeptic, naval volunteer, theatrical patron, and, in the fi…
“There's not a thing on Earth, that I can name, So foolish, and so false, as common fame.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Decadent Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Alexander Brome, born in 1620 and dead on 30 June 1666, belongs to that lively but unevenly remembered company of seventeenth-century English writers whose poems were made for circulation, sociability, controversy, and song. He was a lawyer by profession, a Royalist by conviction, an editor and occasional dramatist by literary activity, and, above all, a writer of satirical and convivial verse. His name is not common…
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Irony, Tenderness
