Book Description

The brightest star at the court of King Charles II, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-80), lived a life of reckless debauchery and sexual adventuring that led to his death at the age of thirty-three - described by Samuel Johnson as having 'blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness'. Rochester was also one of the wittiest and most complex poets of the seventeenth century, writing comic verse, scurrilous satires and highly explicit erotica - from the bawdy self-portrait in 'The Maimed Debauchee' and the tender passion of 'Absent from thee I languish still' to the comic world-weariness of 'Upon Nothing' and 'A Satyr against Mankind', which mocks human follies. With endless literary disguises, rhymes and alliteration, humour and humanity, Rochester's poems hold up a mirror to the extravagances and absurdities of his age.

About the Author

John Wilmot

Rochester's contemporary Andrew Marvell described him as "the best English satirist", and he is generally considered to be the most considerable poet and the most learned among the Restoration wits. His poetry, much of it censored during the Victorian era, began a revival from the 1920s onwards, with notable champions including Graham Greene and Ezra Pound. The critic Vivian de Sola Pinto linked Rochester's libertinism to Hobbesian materialism. During his lifetime, he was best known for A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind, and it remains among his best known works today.

H. Frank Ellis - Editor / Introduction and Notes

H. Frank Ellis is Mary Augusta Jordan Professor Emeritus at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. His books include Sicift's Discourse (1967), Twentieth Century Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe (1969), Poems on Affairs of State, 1[zasłonięte]697-17 (2 vols. 1970, 1975). Swift vs. Maimwraring (1985) and Sentimental Comedy: Theory and Practice (1990).