Andrew Marvell is an intriguing personality, variously identified as a patriot & a spy, a conspirator, closet homosexual, father of the liberal tradition, incendiary satirical pamphleteer & freethinker.

A set of specially commissioned essays forming a fresh understanding of the poet within his time and place.

Although the century which followed Andrew Marvell's death remembered him primarily as a politician and a pamphleteer, this gifted poet is responsible for some of the most brilliant lyric exploration of his time. World Enough and Time is an extensive biography written by Nicholas Murray, a biographer whose literary scholarship and political astuteness matches that of his subject.

He is known chiefly for his brilliant lyric poems, including "The Garden," "The Definition of Love," "Bermudas," "To His Coy Mistress," and the "Horatian Ode" to Cromwell. Marvell's work is marked by extraordinary variety, ranging from incomparable lyric explorations of the inner life to satiric poems on the famous men and important issues of his time-one of the most politically volatile epochs in England's history. From the lover's famous admonition, "Had we but World enough, and Time, / This coyness, Lady, were no crime," to the image of the solitary poet "Annihilating all that's made / To a green Thought in a green Shade," Marvell's poetry has earned a permanent place in the canon and in the hearts of poetry lovers.

The Poems of Andrew Marvell With an introduction and notes by G.A. Aitken Letters Translated by A. B Grosart Most of Marvell's poems on political subjects doubtless appeared as broadsides or pamphlets at the time they were written; but of these original issues one only is known to have survived. "The Character of Holland," written in 1653, printed early, probably, in that year, appears to have been reprinted, in folio, in 1665, with the omission of the latter portion, in which praise was given to Blake and other commanders of the Commonwealth. This mutilated version was again printed, in quarto, in 1672. "The first Anniversary of the Government under his Highness the Lord Protector" was printed, in quarto, by Thomas Newcomb, London, in 1665. "Advice to a Painter" was printed as a four-page folio sheet, without date, but apparently in 1679, after Marvell's death. It is not necessary to justify any effort to make Marvell's Poems more widely known. The sole object of this Preface is to acknowledge my indebtedness to my predecessors, who have, in a greater or less degree, done good service by keeping the poet's name and character in the minds of his countrymen. In 1681, more than two years after Marvell's death, his widow published a collection of his miscellaneous poems. Nearly half a century later Cooke brought out an edition which included the political satires. These pieces could not, of course, be given in the volume of 1681, but they had been printed among other State Poems after the Revolution. Another half century passed before Thompson published an edition of the whole of Marvell's works. Thompson was a Hull captain, and a connection of the poet's family, filled with enthusiasm for his subject, but wanting in the critical training necessary for complete success. In spite, however, of all his shortcomings, it is not to be forgotten that we owe to him some of Marvell's finest poems, and that he was the first to print a large number of Marvell's letters, which are of great assistance in studying his life and writings. Errors in the text grew in number in subsequent cheap editions of the poems, until, in 1872, a century after Thompson, and when I was a scholar at the old Granmiar School at Hull which claimed Marvell as one of its most distinguished pupils, Dr. Grosart published the first volume of a limited edition of Marvell's works. It may be said that that edition was the first in which any serious attempt was made to give an accurate text, or to explain the constant allusions to contemporary events. But greatly as I have been indebted to Dr. Grosarfs work, much remained to be done. Many allusions remained unexplained, while some of the notes upon historical events or persons were written under misapprehension, and the errors in identification led to mistakes in the dating of the poems. In so difficult a field it is not probable that I have entirely escaped pitfalls; and I do not forget that it is far easier to correct others than to be a pioneer.

This text studies the poetry and polemics of early modern writer Andrew Marvell. It situates Marvell and his writings within the patronage networks and political upheavals of mid-17th century England.

A comprehensive edition of one of America's greatest poets, this collection draws from her four published volumes, together with 50 uncollected works and translations of Octavio Paz, Max Jacob and others.

This edition provides both professional critics and casual readers with a methodical aid to appreciating what the author believes to be the most aesthetically eventful, unobtrusively playful, and undemanding complex long poem of the English Renaissance. Using line-by-line annotation, the edition strives to pay minute and continuous attention to the workings of the poem's dazzlingly protean wit, to its multiple, often breathtakingly artful, internal coherences. While the edition does all the usual work a scholarly annotation is expected to do, it is particularly focused on accomplishing what has not been done by previous Marvell scholarship: laying bare every instance of the poem's dynamic wit. In doing so, it, in particular, alerts Marvell's readers to such, for the most part, non-interpretive, aspects of the poem as associative connections operating on the periphery of one's conscious experience, palpable or merely hinted-at wordplay, coexisting multiple syntaxes, and patterns of formal and informal phonic coherence.

An enigmatic men, whose poems balance opposing principles-Royalism and Republicanism, spirituality and sexuality.

Further Reading -- Index