literature 17th century

The Best Seventeenth-Century Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The seventeenth century gave us the first published poems from America, the elaborate conceits and scientific flavour of metaphysical poetry, some classic English epic poems, and the birth of the new, orderly, ‘neoclassical’ poetry that would continue into the following century. Below, we select ten of the most emblematic – and greatest – seventeenth-century poems, and offer a brief introduction to each.

John Donne, ‘ A Hymn to God the Father ’.

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which was my sin, though it were done before? Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore? When thou hast done, thou hast not done, For I have more …

This is one of John Donne’s most famous religious poems. As the Donne scholar P. M. Oliver observed, what makes Donne’s poem unusual and innovative is that Donne has written a hymn that does not set out to praise God so much as engage him in a debate.

What’s more, unlike his earlier poems – probably composed towards the end of the previous century – Donne’s later religious lyrics, written some time during the early seventeenth century, swap the bedroom for the pulpit, but do so with the same feisty and direct manner of address.

Lady Mary Wroth, Sonnet 37 from  Pamphilia to Amphilanthus . 

The sixteenth century was the great century for the sonnet sequence in English literature; Anne Locke’s A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner from the 1560s was the first English sonnet sequence , but it was relatively short. Lady Mary Wroth (1587-c.1652) was the first Englishwoman to write a substantial sonnet sequence. Not only that, but she was admired by her contemporaries, including the hard-to-please Ben Jonson.

This poem reflects the blackest moods of depression, with the speaker wishing to join with the night, since they both embody darkness and are natural partners for each other. The poem might be compared to Sidney’s own Sonnet 99 from Astrophil and Stella; it does, however, stand up on its own as a fine poem in its own right.

Night, welcome art thou to my minde distrest, Darke, heauy, sad, yet not more sad then I: Neuer could’st thou find fitter company For thine owne humour, then I thus opprest…

George Herbert, ‘ Prayer (I) ’.

In 1633, as he lay dying, the Anglican priest George Herbert sent a pile of manuscript poems to a friend, instructing him to publish them if he thought them any good, or else burn them. Happily, Herbert’s friend thought them publishable, and the result was The Temple , published shortly after Herbert’s death. The posthumous collection established Herbert as one of the leading devotional writers in English literature of the seventeenth century.

George Herbert offers in ‘Prayer’ a series of synonyms or definitions for the act of prayer, and what it means to the worshipper: the ‘church’s banquet’ suggests Holy Communion, an intimate connection with God; since angels live forever, an ‘angels’ age’ is another way of saying ‘eternity’; ‘God’s breath in man returning to his birth’ refers to the moment in Genesis when God breathed life into Adam, the first man, thus returning modern man to ‘his birth’ as a species, when Adam was created.

Prayer is the ‘soul in paraphrase’ because when we pray we put into words the often deep and complex emotions surging through our soul; and prayer is the ‘heart in pilgrimage’ because it is part of man’s journey towards God, an ongoing process of living as a good Christian.

Robert Herrick, ‘ To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time ’.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying …

The poem’s message is straightforward: Herrick is addressing ‘the virgins’. This provides another clue as to what he is driving at. Like Andrew Marvell’s seduction lyric ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (see below), Herrick is advising the virgins to ‘make much of time’ by enjoying themselves before their youth and beauty fade.

And yet encouraging a load of young people who haven’t had sex yet has never been couched in such delightful verse as Herrick deploys here. There were quite a few carpe diem or ‘seize the day’ poems written in the seventeenth century, and this is one of the greatest.

Richard Lovelace, ‘ To Althea, from Prison ’.

Stone Walls do not a Prison make, Nor Iron bars a Cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an Hermitage…

Richard Lovelace (1617-57) was a leading Cavalier poet, and an Englishman who supported, and fought for, King Charles I during the Civil War. ‘To Althea, from Prison’ is one of his most famous poems; it certainly contains his most famous lines.

It’s a fine example of the mid-seventeenth-century lyric which reflects the turbulent times in which Lovelace lived and shines a light on a key moment in English history, which would end with the king’s crown – and his life – both being forfeit.

Andrew Marvell, ‘ To His Coy Mistress ’.

This is another fine example of metaphysical poetry. Marvell (1621-78), addressing his sweetheart, says that the woman’s reluctance to have sex with him would be fine, if life wasn’t so short. But such a plan is a fantasy, because in reality, our time on Earth is short.

Marvell says that, in light of what he’s just said, the only sensible thing to do is to enjoy themselves and go to bed together – while they still can. The poem is famous for its enigmatic reference to the poet’s ‘vegetable love’ – which has, perhaps inevitably, been interpreted as a sexual innuendo, and gives us a nice example of the metaphysical poets’ love of unusual metaphors.

John Milton, Paradise Lost .

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God, I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme …

Probably the greatest epic poem in the English language, Paradise Lost (1667) was not Milton’s first attempt at an epic: as a teenager, Milton began writing an epic poem in Latin about the Gunpowder Plot; but in quintum novembris remained unfinished. Instead, his defining work would be this 12-book poem in blank verse about the Fall of Man, taking in Satan’s fall from Heaven, his founding of Pandemonium (the capital of Hell – whence we get the word in use to this day), and his subsequent temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Anne Bradstreet, ‘ The Author to Her Book ’.

Anne Bradstreet (1612-72) was the first person – male or female – from the New World or America to have a volume of poems published. This poem was directly inspired by the news that Bradstreet’s poems had been published in England as The Tenth Muse , by her brother-in-law … supposedly without her consent.

Bradstreet laments the fact that her ‘ill-formed’ verses have seen the light of day and blushes and cringes at them, but this may partly be female modesty. Bradstreet also claims the volume as her ‘child’, casting herself as the mother – if not the midwife – to the book. The poem offers a fascinating insight into seventeenth-century female authorship.

Aphra Behn, ‘ The Disappointment ’.

Her bright Eyes sweat, and yet Severe, Where Love and Shame confus’dly strive, Fresh Vigor to Lisander give: And whispring softly in his Ear, She Cry’d — Cease — cease — your vain desire, Or I’ll call out — What wou’d you do? My dearer Honour, ev’n to you, I cannot — must not give — retire, Or take that Life whose chiefest part I gave you with the Conquest of my Heart …

A small subgenre of poems in the late seventeenth century was the ‘imperfect enjoyment’ poem, named after a poem by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. This was Behn’s response to Rochester’s poem, which uses the same basic setup – a man seducing a woman into bed with him, only to discover that he cannot ‘perform’ – but throws the focus more onto the woman’s reaction.

John Dryden, ‘ Annus Mirabilis ’.

In thriving Arts long time had Holland grown, Crouching at home, and cruel when abroad: Scarce leaving us the means to claim our own; Our King they courted, and our Merchants aw’d …

John Dryden (1631-1700) ushered in the neoclassical style of English poetry, which is characterised by a return to the order and values (including a love of the epic) which we find in classical literature of ancient Greece and Rome.

In this early poem, Dryden describes the ‘year of wonders’, 1666, when the Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames and the Great Fire of London broke out. An important seventeenth-century poem about a key moment in England’s history.

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Seventeenth Century

“Charles I (1600-49)” by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, 1635. Wikimedia Commons .

Introduction

by D.J. Kingdon

The 17th Century in  English  history can be marked with numerous upheavals, with even greater engagement with the wider world and with rapid changes in commerce, science, society and religion. It was a century that was easily broken into two parts: before the Civil War and the  Interregnum  and after those events. Trade across continents opened expansively with cargo moving across the world and across the Atlantic. Cultures began to intermingle and bought goods from each other. In the New World which was rapidly becoming colonized, settlers found that their villages were inhabited by those of various European countries. They realised that in order to colonize this “land of opportunity”, they had to work together.  In Europe, Galileo and Kepler were busy with their  revolutionary theories on heliocentrism and planetary motion which were not without controversy. Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity while being known as a very gifted theologian and writer. As Protestant “minimalism” became more anchored in Europe, the Catholic Church countered with the opposite: its funding of the “baroque”or the elaborate and exaggerated in its buildings and arts and music. This grand century of reason, science and the colonisation of new lands was occurring parallel with yet another century of political and religious struggle in  England .

It is important to remember that the influence of the Elizabethan Age did not end with Elizabeth’s death in 1603. It continued on into the early part of the 17th Century with Francis Bacon (who lived until 1626) being its most important writer and essayist. He wrote on a remarkable range of topics: law, science, mythology, philosophy, ethics and religion. Bacon wrote over seventy works, but only 20 were published in his lifetime. Shakespeare wrote his first play,  Henry IV (Part I),  in 1590 and in the new century he wrote 20 of his 37 plays. His last play was written in 1513, a few years before his death. So, the “Golden Age of Elizabeth” continued a decade or two into the tumult that was to grip  England  for the middle part of the 1600’s. The religious and political extremism of the mid-century curtailed the wit and and high ideals that had been exhibited in writings at its beginning. It was not until the succession of Charles II, and the Restoration period that writers would feel free again to create the heroic world of a Milton or the comedy of a William Wycherly.

After the Tudors: The Stuarts

Elizabeth I died childless in 1603 and James I of  England  (who had been James the VI of Scotland before taking the British throne) succeeded his cousin. He was not a Tudor, he was a Stuart. He was also the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. James came to the throne at the tender age of one, after his mother’s forced abdication. Unlike his mother, he was raised a staunch Protestant. James was also the great-great-grandson of Henry VII, King of  England  and Lord of Ireland which meant that James was to eventually claim the three thrones as his right. James, through this lineage, was able to do what no other ruler could do before him: he unified  England , Scotland and Ireland thereby calling himself “The King of Great Britain and Ireland” though Parliament did not agree with this new title. Nevertheless, he reigned over all  three kingdoms until his death in 1625. This was to be later coined the  Jacobean  era. This was the same King James who oversaw the translation of a Bible for the common people which was published in 1611 and is still in publication today. This Bible served to strengthen Protestantism, but it also was responsible for introducing hundreds of phrases and idioms into the  English  language. The King James Bible influenced many writers during the period soon after its publication, among these was John Milton.

Soon after James’ succession to the throne, he was met with much resistance. In 1605, a group of angry  English  Catholics who disagreed with James’ lack of tolerance for the Catholic Church plotted to blow up the House of Lords at the state opening of Parliament on November 5, 1605. The plot was uncovered and at midnight the night before the opening, authorities discovered a man by the name of Guy Fawkes guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder under the Parliament building.  That was enough explosive to have reduced the building to ashes. All the men involved were executed and to this day, the fifth of November is termed “Guy Fawkes Night” and is commemorated with bonfires, firecrackers and burning effigies of Guy Fawkes. But the dissent with James did not end there. Many of the  English  resented having a Scottish king and they felt that they had been “invaded” by the Scots . A plot to bomb the homes of prominent  Scottish residents was discovered and stopped. This discovery shocked the  English  and brought James a lot of sympathy. But it was not enough to stop the series of wars that were to come.

 The  English  Civil War

The foment that had been brewing between Catholics and Protestants for well over a century, long before Elizabeth I, finally led to a series of three wars which have been simply known as “The  English  Civil War”. After the death of James I, his son, Charles I came to power as the new King of  England , Ireland and Scotland. He was quick to exercise his “divine right of kings” as he proceeded to dissolve one Parliament and marry a  Spanish Catholic a year after he took the throne. His arrogance and lack of humility angered the  English  and his marriage was not popular among his subjects. Charles continued these impulsive actions with his pro-Catholic stance and dissolved another two more Parliaments, ruling ten years without a Parliament at all. It was the Scots’ military incursion as far south as Durham during the “Bishop’s War” that finally sent Charles back to convene Parliament so that he could finance a defence. The Parliament agreed as long as he gave in to their demands. One of them was that it would be forbidden for him to dissolve Parliament again without their permission. This was the beginning of what is now termed “The Long Parliament” because the Parliament sat from 1640 through 1660 without dissolution.

Around 1641, Parliament sent a list of grievances to the King called “The Grand Remonstrance”. It divided the Parliament because many saw it as a document that was too puritanical and populist in tone. Charles was angered by these grievances and marched soldiers into the House of Commons to arrest the MP’s who had been instrumental in drafting the missive. But they had already fled. Charles knew he had lost control over Parliament and the City of London, so he also left the capital to go into hiding.

Eventually, these grievances against the King led to a division among the  English , a division that led to the formation of two armies: the Royalists (who gained the support of Catholics, anti-Puritans, anti-populists, and the nobility in the north and west) and the Parliamentarians (who were supported by the middle class, the merchants and the staunch Protestants in the south and east). These civil wars were devastating to the  English .

In 1649, Charles I was found guilty of treason and executed. It was then that  England  became known as a Commonwealth. This left Charles II, son of the previous monarch as ruler and he immediately made an alliance with Ireland and Scotland. Oliver Cromwell, who was heading the Parliamentarian troops responded to this by invading Ireland and killing a fourth of its population. He then entered Scotland and took Edinburgh.  Charles II also landed in Scotland to lead uprisings against Cromwell’s forces. But Cromwell pursued the King’s regiments and defeated them in 1651. This ended the Civil War. Charles II fled to France, leaving Oliver Cromwell as leader of the country.

The  Interregnum

Because  England  had never had rule without a kingship, and Cromwell was now the head of state, Parliamentarians in the “Rump Parliament” (the leftover MPs after the war) could not agree  with Cromwell on how to rule the Commonwealth. The army was the most powerful group in the country at that point, so they took control of the Commonwealth and declared Cromwell “Lord Protector”. This meant that while he was not a king, per se, he ruled as one. Effectively, what Cromwell did was rule the Commonwealth with a number of major-generals which meant it left  England  as a military dictatorship. Cromwell allowed more religious freedom for Protestants but as an avowed Puritan he introduced many “moral laws” which forbade people to dance, to attend the theatre, to make music, to drink, and even to celebrate Christmas. The arts and literature suffered during this time and the frivolity and flowering of the arts enjoyed during the Elizabethan period became a faint memory. Upon Cromwell’s death, in 1658, he was succeeded by his son, Richard who was then named the new “Lord Protector.” However, Richard had none of the political prowess of his father, nor the ambition or leadership capabilities. After a series of very inept political moves and equally inept decisions,  he tended his resignation which was accepted and he left for France. He was only in power for nine months.

The Restoration

In 1660, soon after the exit of Richard Cromwell, Puritanism was outlawed in  England , not by the King, but by Parliament. Charles the II who had fled after the Civil War was invited to return to  England  to assume the monarchy.  Charles II was the antithesis to the grim puritanical Cromwell. He was called the “merry monarch”. He was a very agreeable ruler. He believed that in the matters of religion one should simply “live and let live”. He arrived in great splendour in  England  as he had been well-schooled in Versailles by Louis XIV where he had spent his early exile. He and Louis were good friends.  Taverns, brothels, racing arenas and theatres reopened under Charles II. There was even a special “Theatre Royal” opened in Drury Lane. The extroverted King enjoyed walking in the park with his spaniels trailing behind him and it is said he often would stop to chat with the people he met on his walks. The reinstatement of Charles II as king led to a resurgence of the arts and culture that had been obscured with years of war and another decade of Cromwell’s grim “moral laws”. Alas, though Charles II was a colourful figure and a patron of the arts, his seventeen mistresses and his extravagant lifestyle soon led him to come to loggerheads with Parliament over his expenditures. Added to this expense was that London was hit with a plague in 1665 that killed at least 68,000 people (though some estimated that it was twice that). Then the next year, a great fire swept London gutting the medieval city within the old Roman wall destroying a great many of the houses within the area. It is estimated that almost 70,000 houses were destroyed. If this was not enough, the following year, the Dutch sailed up the Thames, burned thirteen navy ships and took the navy flagship  The Royal Charles  as a souvenir.  England  had been brought to its knees and Charles’ hedonistic lifestyle was blamed.

Charles II later died without any legitimate heirs (though he had fifteen illegitimate children) and on his deathbed converted to Catholicism because he had promised Louis the XIV that when he found a good time to do it, he would. A deathbed conversion seemed convenient. Charles II made his exit with no doubt a huge crowd of mistresses and children there to bid him  adieu .

The Restoration brought much needed life back into the arts and writing. That period is most characterised by its plays especially its comedies which are still being produced today. It was a time of novelty and change and relaxation after the difficult decades before. But mostly, it was a time of  the  reclamation  of writing and the arts which had been largely ignored because of war and forbidden because of Puritanism.  Aside from the witty Restoration comedies, the prose that has endured as classics from that period are John Bunyan’s  The Pilgrim’s Progress  and Milton’s  Paradise Lost.  The poetry most known from that time is that   of John Dryden.

The Glorious Revolution

Because there was no direct male heir to the throne, James II, brother to Charles II came to rule. He was a very openly devout Catholic and he was unapologetic about it. The  English  were not open to having a Catholic monarch rule over their very Protestant country. The succession of James II to the throne led to the “Exclusion Crisis” which divided Parliament among the Tories and the Whigs. The Tories wanted James to rule and the Whigs wanted to “exclude” James from succession. This led to the “Monmouth Rebellion” which was organised by James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth (Charles II’s eldest illegitimate son) to stop James from ruling. It was unsuccessful and the Duke was beheaded. James II then executed 320 supporters of the Duke of Monmouth and then sent another 800 to the West Indies, which with its primitive conditions was tantamount to a death sentence. James II used this opportunity to consolidate his power and to exercise more of his “divine right of kings”. He dismissed the Earl of Rochester, Lord of the Treasury, when he would not recant Anglicanism. He used his power to appoint Roman Catholics to top posts. Everything that Elizabeth I had done to keep Protestantism as the religion of  England  was being stripped. More than that, Catholicism was being imposed without any tolerance for opposition. When James II had a son, and it was clear that there was another Catholic-in-waiting to succeed to the  English  throne, Parliament and the  English  had reached their boiling point. It was clear that James II believed as King he had the right to impose his will on all matters and that he was nothing short of a despot who would stop at nothing to get his way.

A list of grievances was drawn up against James II including: cruel and unusual punishments (he had people who opposed him hanged, drawn and quartered), he suspended laws passed by Parliament, he intimidated Anglican bishops, he kept invoking his divine right as king and usurping Parliamentary law.  As Parliament (along with other  influential  leaders in  England ) searched for some way to depose the king, it came to their attention that James II had a daughter who was a Protestant and who was married to William III, Prince of Orange and a Dutch  Statdtholder  (official). William had been the son of Mary, the daughter of Charles I. He was also a Protestant. William and Mary (his spouse) were first cousins. In a very bold move, the majority in Parliament decided to invite William and Mary to “invade”  England  and depose James II as ruler. In 1688, William landed in Brixham on the southern coast of  England  and James II was sent fleeing. James mounted an offence to regain the Crown in 1690 in Ireland. But William fought back and defeated him at the  Battle of Boyne  in eastern Ireland. James II went into hiding in France. Though the “Glorious Revolution” is termed a bloodless revolution, there were Jacobite uprisings and loss of life in skirmishes in Ireland and Scotland by loyalists to James II.

The Declaration of Rights

The Revolution brought about sweeping changes especially in limiting the power of the monarch and in ensuring the rights of the people. The Declaration of Rights had these important tenets included:

The Limitation of the Monarch’s Powers

When William and Mary succeeded to the throne of  England  as co-regents, they had to agree to certain terms put forth by Parliament. These terms (included in the Declaration of Rights)  were to forever change the  English  monarchy and its powers. William and Mary agreed to a limitation of their powers and they acknowledged the lawmaking authority of Parliament. This guaranteed that the Parliamentary law was supreme, not the monarch’s will. Parliament would make the laws from that time forward. The monarchs would no longer impose laws at will. And they also declared that there could never be another Catholic monarch again nor could a monarch marry a Catholic.

For the Common People

For the  English  people, among the rights guaranteed were: that Parliament was to hold free elections (with no monarch involved in any part of the election in any way); that Parliament was to meet frequently and regularly (not just when a monarch called them to convene) and Parliamentarians had the right to free speech within the chamber and in public; that Protestants could have arms for their defence  suitable to their condition as allowed by law  (it was only Catholics who had had rights to bear arms at that time); they had the right to petition; they had a right to reasonable bail fees, no excessive fines and no unusual punishments (those were now illegal) and they had a right to qualified jurors.

There is no doubt that this revolutionary document was a precursor to the American “Bill of Rights” which was to come a century later.

The 17th century was one that started with the glory of  the court of Elizabeth I and ended with the monarchy stripped of all its power except for ceremony. As the famous bard who ushered in the 17th century once wrote:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries…and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures.”  (Julius Caesar, Act 4, scene 3, 218-224)

The  English  people took the current and gained their liberty from centuries of royal oppression. While there were still more battles to be fought, they would now be fought on a more just and level ground.

An Open Companion to Early British Literature Copyright © 2019 by Allegra Villarreal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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English literature in the earlier seventeenth century, 1600-1660

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• Introduction
• Alliterative verse
• The major manuscripts
• Problems of dating
• Religious verse
• Elegiac and heroic verse
• Early translations into English
• Late 10th- and 11th-century prose
• Influence of French poetry
• Didactic poetry
• Verse romance
• The revival of alliterative poetry
• Courtly poetry
• Chaucer and Gower
• Popular and secular verse
• Political verse
• Religious prose
• Secular prose
• Middle English drama
• The transition from medieval to Renaissance

Social conditions

Intellectual and religious revolution, the race for cultural development.

• Development of the English language
• Sidney and Spenser
• Elizabethan lyric
• The sonnet sequence
• Other poetic styles
• Prose styles, 1550–1600
• Theatres in London and the provinces
• Professional playwrights
• The early histories
• The early comedies
• The tragedies
• Shakespeare’s later works
• Other Jacobean dramatists
• The last Renaissance dramatists
• Donne’s influence
• Jonson and the Cavalier poets
• Continued influence of Spenser
• Effect of religion and science on early Stuart prose
• Prose styles
• The defeated republicans
• Writings of the Nonconformists
• Writings of the royalists
• Chroniclers
• The court wits
• Drama by Dryden and others
• Thomson, Prior, and Gay
• Shaftesbury and others
• Other novelists
• Johnson’s poetry and prose
• The nature of Romanticism
• Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge
• Other poets of the early Romantic period
• The later Romantics: Shelley, Keats, and Byron
• Other poets of the later period
• The novel: from the Gothic novel to Austen and Scott
• Discursive prose
• Thackeray, Gaskell, and others
• The Brontës
• Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Arnold and Clough
• Early Victorian nonfiction prose
• The Victorian theater
• Victorian literary comedy
• The Edwardians
• Anglo-American Modernism: Pound, Lewis, Lawrence, and Eliot
• Celtic Modernism: Yeats, Joyce, Jones, and MacDiarmid
• The literature of World War I and the interwar period
• The literature of World War II (1939–45)
• The 21st century

The Renaissance period: 1550–1660

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• Academia - English Literature
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• Complutense University of Madrid - The Development of English Literature (Summary)
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• Table Of Contents

Literature and the age

In a tradition of literature remarkable for its exacting and brilliant achievements, the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods have been said to represent the most brilliant century of all. (The reign of Elizabeth I began in 1558 and ended with her death in 1603; she was succeeded by the Stuart king James VI of Scotland , who took the title James I of England as well. English literature of his reign as James I, from 1603 to 1625, is properly called Jacobean.) These years produced a gallery of authors of genius, some of whom have never been surpassed , and conferred on scores of lesser talents the enviable ability to write with fluency, imagination, and verve. From one point of view, this sudden renaissance looks radiant, confident, heroic—and belated, but all the more dazzling for its belatedness. Yet, from another point of view, this was a time of unusually traumatic strain, in which English society underwent massive disruptions that transformed it on every front and decisively affected the life of every individual. In the brief, intense moment in which England assimilated the European Renaissance, the circumstances that made the assimilation possible were already disintegrating and calling into question the newly won certainties, as well as the older truths that they were dislodging. This doubleness, of new possibilities and new doubts simultaneously apprehended, gives the literature its unrivaled intensity.

In this period England’s population doubled; prices rocketed, rents followed, old social loyalties dissolved, and new industrial, agricultural, and commercial veins were first tapped. Real wages hit an all-time low in the 1620s, and social relations were plunged into a state of fluidity from which the merchant and the ambitious lesser gentleman profited at the expense of the aristocrat and the laborer, as satires and comedies current from the 1590s complain. Behind the Elizabethan vogue for pastoral poetry lies the fact of the prosperity of the enclosing sheep farmer, who sought to increase pasture at the expense of the peasantry. Tudor platitudes about order and degree could neither combat nor survive the challenge posed to rank by these arrivistes. The position of the crown, politically dominant yet financially insecure, had always been potentially unstable, and, when Charles I lost the confidence of his greater subjects in the 1640s, his authority crumbled. Meanwhile, the huge body of poor fell ever further behind the rich; the pamphlets of Thomas Harman (1566) and Robert Greene (1591–92), as well as Shakespeare ’s King Lear (1605–06), provide glimpses of a horrific world of vagabondage and crime, the Elizabethans’ biggest, unsolvable social problem .

The barely disguised social ferment was accompanied by an intellectual revolution, as the medieval synthesis collapsed before the new science , new religion, and new humanism. While modern mechanical technologies were pressed into service by the Stuarts to create the scenic wonders of the court masque , the discoveries of astronomers and explorers were redrawing the cosmos in a way that was profoundly disturbing:

And freely men confess that this world’s spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new…. (John Donne, The First Anniversary , 1611)

The majority of people were more immediately affected by the religious revolutions of the 16th century. A person in early adulthood at the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 would, by her death in 1603, have been vouchsafed an unusually disillusioning insight into the duty owed by private conscience to the needs of the state. The Tudor church hierarchy was an instrument of social and political control, yet the mid-century controversies over the faith had already wrecked any easy confidence in the authority of doctrines and forms and had taught people to inquire carefully into the rationale of their own beliefs (as John Donne does in his third satire [c. 1596]). The Elizabethan ecclesiastical compromise was the object of continual criticism , from radicals both within (who desired progressive reforms, such as the abolition of bishops) and without (who desired the return of England to the Roman Catholic fold), but the incipient liberalism of individuals such as John Milton and the scholar and churchman William Chillingworth was held in check by the majority’s unwillingness to tolerate a plurality of religions in a supposedly unitary state . Nor was the Calvinist orthodoxy that cradled most English writers comforting, for it told them that they were corrupt, unfree, unable to earn their own salvations, and subject to heavenly judgments that were arbitrary and absolute. Calvinism deeply affects the world of the Jacobean tragedies, whose heroes are not masters of their fates but victims of divine purposes that are terrifying yet inscrutable.

The third complicating factor was the race to catch up with Continental developments in arts and philosophy. The Tudors needed to create a class of educated diplomats, statesmen, and officials and to dignify their court by making it a fount of cultural as well as political patronage. The new learning, widely disseminated through the Erasmian (after the humanist Desiderius Erasmus ) educational programs of such men as John Colet and Sir Thomas Elyot , proposed to use a systematic schooling in Latin authors and some Greek to encourage in the social elites a flexibility of mind and civilized serviceableness that would allow enlightened princely government to walk hand in hand with responsible scholarship. Humanism fostered an intimate familiarity with the classics that was a powerful incentive for the creation of an English literature of answerable dignity. It fostered as well a practical, secular piety that left its impress everywhere on Elizabethan writing. Humanism’s effect, however, was modified by the simultaneous impact of the flourishing Continental cultures , particularly the Italian. Repeatedly, crucial innovations in English letters developed resources originating from Italy—such as the sonnet of Petrarch , the epic of Ludovico Ariosto , the pastoral of Jacopo Sannazzaro , the canzone, and blank verse—and values imported with these forms were in competition with the humanists’ ethical preoccupations. Social ideals of wit, many-sidedness, and sprezzatura (accomplishment mixed with unaffectedness) were imbibed from Baldassare Castiglione ’s Il cortegiano , translated as The Courtyer by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561, and Elizabethan court poetry is steeped in Castiglione’s aristocratic Neoplatonism, his notions of universal proportion, and the love of beauty as the path to virtue. Equally significant was the welcome afforded to Niccolò Machiavelli , whose lessons were vilified publicly and absorbed in private. The Prince , written in 1513, was unavailable in English until 1640, but as early as the 1580s Gabriel Harvey , a friend of the poet Edmund Spenser , can be found enthusiastically hailing its author as the apostle of modern pragmatism . “We are much beholden to Machiavel and others,” said Francis Bacon , “that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.”

So the literary revival occurred in a society rife with tensions, uncertainties, and competing versions of order and authority, religion and status, sex and the self. The Elizabethan settlement was a compromise; the Tudor pretense that the people of England were unified in belief disguised the actual fragmentation of the old consensus under the strain of change. The new scientific knowledge proved both man’s littleness and his power to command nature; against the Calvinist idea of man’s helplessness pulled the humanist faith in his dignity, especially that conviction , derived from the reading of Seneca and so characteristic of the period, of man’s constancy and fortitude , his heroic capacity for self-determination. It was still possible for Elizabeth to hold these divergent tendencies together in a single, heterogeneous culture , but under her successors they would eventually fly apart. The philosophers speaking for the new century would be Francis Bacon, who argued for the gradual advancement of science through patient accumulation of experiments, and the skeptic Michel de Montaigne (his Essays translated from the French by John Florio [1603]), who denied that it was possible to formulate any general principles of knowledge.

Cutting across all of these was the persistence of popular habits of thought and expression. Both humanism and Puritanism set themselves against vulgar ignorance and folk tradition, but, fortunately, neither could remain aloof for long from the robustness of popular taste. Sir Philip Sidney , in England’s first Neoclassical literary treatise , The Defence of Poesie (written c. 1578–83, published 1595), candidly admitted that “the old song [i.e., ballad] of Percy and Douglas” would move his heart “more than with a trumpet,” and his Arcadia (final version published in 1593) is a representative instance of the fruitful cross-fertilization of genres in this period—the contamination of aristocratic pastoral with popular tale, the lyric with the ballad , comedy with romance , tragedy with satire, and poetry with prose. The language, too, was undergoing a rapid expansion that all classes contributed to and benefited from, sophisticated literature borrowing without shame the idioms of colloquial speech. An allusion in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606–07) to heaven peeping “through the blanket of the dark” would become a “problem” only later, when, for instance, Samuel Johnson complained in 1751 that such words provoked laughter rather than awe. Johnson’s was an age when tragic dignity implied politeness, when it was below the dignity of tragedy to mention so lowly an object as a blanket. But the Elizabethans’ ability to address themselves to several audiences simultaneously and to bring into relation opposed experiences, emphases, and worldviews invested their writing with complexity and power.

English 101: English Literature

Introduction to 17th & 18th-century literature: major authors and works.

If the above player doesn't work, try this direct link .

After you watch the video and know the material, click HERE for the quiz.

A lot can happen in 200 years, as you'll see on our lesson that introduces you to British literature of the 17th and 18th centuries. Go from Shakespeare to the invention of the novel to the introduction of a prominent dictionary in our video below!

200 Years of Literature

Two hundred years of literature - no big deal, right? As you might have guessed, during the 17th and 18th centuries, a whole lot happened in the world of English lit. It would be impossible to cover everything that went down in this intro lesson, but we're going to take a quick tour of the broad movements that defined these two centuries of the written word in the U.K.

If you, like me, struggle with what '17th century' means as far as what the years actually were, 17th century: 1600s; 18th century: 1700s. I mix those up all the time; let's just put that out there right now.

Basically, this period of English literature can be broken down into three smaller eras, each of which has their own little sub-eras, so take these designations loosely. It's not like they're set in stone, but they're just meant to give a sense of context. So, today we're going to be looking at:

• The Renaissance - or really, the back end of it. The early 17th century is also known as the 'Jacobean era' in England.
• The Caroline, Interregnum and Restoration periods that filled up the latter half of the 17th century. By the way, these names basically just refer to what was going on politically at the time. ('Caroline' is the Latin word for 'Charles,' and King Charles I had an on-again/off-again relationship with the throne during this time.)
• The Neoclassicism of the 18th century. The first half of this century is also known as the 'Augustan era'.

So, alright, let's dive right in!

The Renaissance

We're not going to spend a whole lot of time on the Renaissance since we've already got a few lessons covering that period and its main authors in detail. But we can't rightly talk about the 17th century of British literature without mentioning William Shakespeare , the biggest name in the field. He's the big daddy - the big cheese. He wrote plays and poems that were immensely popular, and we've got videos that cover a lot of them. Some of the most important pieces that he wrote are the stand-outs, like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet . If you study literature, he's often the figure to which all other writers are compared - so, totally important guy.

Of course, he wasn't the only writer to make a name for himself in the early 17th century. There was also his frenemy, Ben Jonson , a fellow dramatist and poet. Jonson's most famous for satirical stage productions that illuminated human flaws via darkly comedic plots. Some famous Ben Jonson works include - and this one, I say 'Vol-pone', I've heard 'Vol-poh-nay', you call Volpone what you will, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair . Jonson was also known for his masques , or elaborate stage plays produced in the royal court, kind of like the ancient version of a Lady Gaga concert.

One other important part of literary culture in the early 17th century was the appearance of metaphysical poets , like John Donne . These poets were extremely clever and crafty with their words, but they also really meditate on some heavy subjects, like 'What is religion?' and 'What is love?' Their poetry is marked by their intricate phrasing and extended metaphors; if it helps, you can think of them as poetic show-offs; although that shouldn't detract from the fact that they were often talking about really important things.

Before we moving on from the Renaissance, let's just mention a couple other cultural landmarks from that time. A little bit prior to the 17th century, the printing press kicked into high gear in England, and this allowed literature to be mass-produced for the first time, and that's huge - so it's not just available to the elite. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the printing press was the Bible. In particular, the King James Bible was completed in 1611; this was more or less the definitive English-language Bible and a massively important piece of literature at the time. The Bible's influence is everywhere in English literature; it's almost impossible to overstate how influential it is.

Also, other disciplines, like the sciences, really began to jell during this period, and that was led by major thinkers and essayists, like Francis Bacon, whose work brought about the scientific method - which hopefully you're familiar with from science classes. So, we owe a lot to Bacon.

Caroline/Interregnum/Restoration

A lot of the trends from the late Renaissance continued into the latter part of the 17th century, known as the Caroline, Interregnum and Restoration periods. For example, metaphysical poetry kept going and got one of its most famous practitioners in someone named Andrew Marvell , whose poem 'To His Coy Mistress' is really one of the most celebrated in our language. You might be familiar with the opening couplet of 'To His Coy Mistress.' It goes:

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime .

He's basically saying, hey, we don't have forever, but let's get together while we can - so, he's smooth. It's a great poem; you should really check it out.

Another important thing to remember here is Restoration literature , particularly Restoration comedy , is so-named because it's what resulted after King Charles II was restored to the English throne after almost two decades of boring Puritan rule. Restoration comedy is marked by its incredible sexual explicitness; it would even make some modern audiences blush. This was also the first time in history that there were female actors (or you know, 'actresses') and female playwrights. The times, they were a-changing. We've got a whole lesson on Restoration comedy you can watch if you want to learn more about this crazy time in English theatrical history, and I recommend you do.

However, in the later half of the 17th century, some of the biggest splashes were being made by three guys who were all conveniently named John, and we're going to talk about each of them. We've got:

• John Milton
• John Dryden
• John Bunyan

Of the three, I'd say John Milton is the big one; you've probably heard his name before. When it comes to English lit, he's usually placed as the second most important writer, after Shakespeare, so he was a big deal. Again, we've got a whole lesson on Milton if you want to know more about him, but here are the basics: He was a noted essayist, poet and dramatist who produced popular but controversial work leading up to and during the Puritan regime (during which he actually held a political office). Exemplifying his work from that period is an essay called 'Areopagitica' (you can read it on the screen; that's not a word I'm familiar with). It's a 1644 tract about the dangers of censorship that helped develop the concept of freedom of the press. So, that's huge.

But what he's probably most known for, and what you've probably heard in conjunction with Milton's name, is the poem Paradise Lost from 1667. It's a Homeric-style epic that dramatizes the story of Satan's rebellion from God and the fall of Man. Maybe that doesn't sound that appealing but it's a kickin' poem. You should really check it out. It's one of the most celebrated works of literature in the English language; it's long - it's over 10,000 lines long, but it's really worth the investment of time. It's fascinating and also another huge influence on literature.

But let's not neglect the other Johns. As important as John Milton was to long-form poetry, John Dryden was also the most celebrated poet of his age, to the point that some literary circles referred to Restoration England as 'the Age of Dryden.' While you may or may not have heard of his individual works, he racked up a couple accomplishments that are really hard to ignore. First, he was the first guy to formally hold the position of England's 'poet laureate' - so, good on him. Second, he established the heroic couplet as the dominant form of English verse. For an example of a heroic couplet, take these two lines from Mac Flecknoe , his celebrated satire:

All human things are subject to decay,

And when fate summons, monarchs must obey

So basically, heroic couplets are just pairs of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter. You can see this used all throughout English literature, from John Keats to Alexander Pope to even modern pop music (which some might consider literature - not me, but some). Anyway, Dryden's influence is hard to downplay; there are heroic couplets everywhere.

Last, we'll talk about John Bunyan , one of those Puritans we mentioned earlier - who is not Paul Bunyan, no matter what I say. Bunyan wrote one of the major examples of religious literature, The Pilgrim's Progress , in 1678. This is a lengthy allegory in which the lead character, conveniently named Christian, tries to make his way through the world while fending off characters like Beelzebub, Lord Hate-good and Atheist. This may not be the most subtle piece of work ever written, but it was incredibly popular and has never gone out of print since its release. It's also one of the most prototypical examples of the early novel. It's over 100,000 words and split into two parts with no chapter breaks, so it's not quite the literary form we know yet, but that will come quickly. We have a video on The Pilgrim's Progress if you want to learn about it in more detail.

Neoclassicism

One of the most defining features of 18th-century British literature is the rise of the novel . During this time, authors like Daniel Defoe (who wrote Robinson Crusoe ) and Jonathan Swift (who wrote Gulliver's Travels ) began to write in the lengthy, chapter-divided form that today we consider the standard for consuming literature. Obviously, though, this standardization wasn't always the case. What happened? Well, in addition to writers like Bunyan, Defoe and Swift paving the way (all three had serious successes with their works), the Licensing Act of 1737 encouraged more controversial thinkers, who would typically write plays to fire up the masses, to instead turn to novels. This was a huge act of censorship that neutered drama for some time in England, but it ended up working out okay for people who enjoy reading novels, like myself.

Besides novels, poetry was still going strong in the 18th century. One of the major figures working in the form was one of my favorites, Alexander Pope , a noted satirist and classicist who produced popular works, like The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad , mock epics that scrutinized what he saw as the failings of his time by casting them in a very serious, heroic light a la Milton or Homer. Really funny guy; his stuff is great. Check out Pope.

One other important literary figure of the time is Samuel Johnson , a celebrated essayist, poet and critic who helped define and push the boundaries of English literature with his work - like an influential annotated edition of Shakespeare's plays and, most importantly, one of the first major dictionaries, simply titled A Dictionary of the English Language . Who needs something fancier? In fact, until the famed Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1895, Johnson's was the preferred dictionary of choice among writers and scholars. So, that's a really impressive contribution.

A few other aspects of 18th-century literary culture began to look quite a bit like our own. Also, in the mid-1700s, writer John Newberry made children's literature a popular thing or a real thing that people took seriously. (You may be familiar with the children's literature award now named after him, the Newberry Medal.) Finally, during this period an illustrator named William Hogarth pioneered sequential art - what we now refer to today as comics or graphic novels. Although in his time this much more resembled political cartoons or newspaper strips than the graphic novels you may think of today, like Maus or Persepolis.

Lesson Summary

So that's 200 years of literature condensed down into just a few minutes. Of course, there's a whole lot I wasn't able to cover, and there are a lot of lessons to help fill in the gaps, but let's just do a basic recap. We divided these 200 years into three major periods:

• The Renaissance , which really started in the 16th century and took up roughly the first third of the 17th, depending on who you're talking to. During this period, writers like Shakespeare , Ben Jonson and John Donne left their marks, particularly in the worlds of theater and poetry.
• The Caroline, Interregnum and Restoration eras - Those took up roughly the remainder of the 17th century and saw important work from the three Johns: Milton , Dryden and Bunyan .
• And finally, the Neoclassical period that took up much of the 18th century. This was marked in large part by the rise of the novel and featured luminary creators such as Daniel Defoe , Jonathan Swift , Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson , the guy who created the first English-language dictionary.

And that, my friends, is 200 years of literature in a nutshell.

British Literary Materials in Special Collections: Literature Before 1700

• Getting Started
• Literature Before 1700
• 18th-Century Literature
• 19th-Century Literature
• Related Guides
• 20th- and 21st-Century Literature

Renaissance English Literature (16th Century)

  Areas of strength in the collections include:

• Religious texts, especially sermons and Bibles
• Early editions of Edmund Spenser's poetry

17th-Century English Literature

Francis Beaumont , 1554-1616, and John Fletcher , 1579-1625: Multiple and early editions of many of the plays, including the first folio of their Comedies and Tragedies (1647). 

John Dryden , 1631-1700: About 175 versions of works by Dryden, including multiple and early editions of many plays.  The collection also includes editions of Dryden's translations of works by Ovid, Plutarch, and Virgil.  

Ben Jonson , 1573?-1637: Over 35 versions of Jonson's works, including the first folio and multiple early editions of the Workes , Every Man in His Humour, The Alchemist, and Volpone .

John Milton , 1608-1674: About 160 versions of Milton's works, including more than fifty editions of Paradise Lost from the 1669 first edition to the 21st century, multiple early editions of Paradise Regained, and many of the prose works. 

William Shakespeare , 1564-1616: Nearly 300 editions of Shakespeare's works, including a copy of the fourth folio, many illustrated sets, and hundreds of individual plays from 1700 to 2000. 

16th-Century Highlights

• William Langland, The Vision of Pierce Plowman , 1550
• Geneva Bible, 1560 more... less... First edition of the Geneva Bible.
• Sir Thomas More, Lucubrationes... , 1563 more... less... Contains early image of Utopia.
• Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , 1590 more... less... First edition, first issue.
• Geoffrey Chaucer, Workes , 1598

17th-Century Highlights

• John Donne, Poems and Juvenilia , 1633
• William Shakespeare, Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies , 1685 more... less... The "Fourth Folio" of Shakespeare's plays.
• Anglican Clergyman's Sermons, 17th century more... less... Manuscript sermons of an unidentified clergyman.
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• Next: 18th-Century Literature >>
• Last Updated: Dec 15, 2022 10:55 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.duke.edu/britishliterature

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17th Century Writers

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Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher. Widely regarded as the co-founder of modern political philosophy, Hobbes is best known for his influential book Leviathan . Apart from political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes also contributed immensely to various other fields, such as ethics, theology, geometry, history, and jurisprudence.

John Milton was an English poet whose epic poem Paradise Lost is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of literature. Milton's other celebrated work Areopagitica is counted among history's most impassioned and influential defenses of freedom of the press and freedom of speech. John Milton’s works have influenced other prominent writers, such as Thomas Hardy and George Eliot.

Eighteenth-century essayist, poet, and pamphleteer Jonathan Swift is remembered for his iconic works such as A Tale of a Tub , A Modest Proposal , and Gulliver's Travels . One of the world’s greatest satirists, he gave rise to the deadpan Swiftian style. He had also been the Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral .

Moliere was a French poet, playwright, and actor. Considered one of the greatest French-language writers of all time, Moliere's plays are often performed at the Comédie-Française and have been translated into several languages. Moliere had a huge impact on the French language and is widely regarded as the creator of modern French comedy.

English playwright, poet, and actor William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. He is also often called England's national poet. Many of his works have been translated into other languages and his plays continue to be produced till day. Popular during his lifetime, he acquired an iconic status after his death.

William Penn was a writer and one of the earliest members of the Quakers . He is credited with founding the Province of Pennsylvania. He also oversaw the planning and development of the city of Philadelphia. Penn has several universities and schools named in his honor, including the William Penn University in Iowa. 

Most people have grown up reading fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Puss in Boots . However, they aren’t probably aware that these folk tales were first collated and presented under the genre fairy tales, as Tales of Mother Goose , by 17th-century French author Charles Perrault.

Thomas Browne was an English author and polymath who wrote several books on varied fields, such as religion, medicine, science, and the esoteric. Browne incorporated different styles of writing depending upon the genre he was working on. Over the years, his writing has influenced several other writers like Herman Melville. Browne's works have been admired by personalities like William Osler.

John Bunyan, the noted author of The Pilgrim’s Progress , was known for his belief in Puritanism. The son of a brazier, he initially quit school to join his father’s trade. He was later inspired by chapbooks, to write his iconic works and has also become a preacher.

Lady Margaret Lucas Cavendish was an English poet, philosopher, playwright, fiction writer, and scientist. Margaret, who had the audacity to publish her works without using a pen name at a time when female writers remained anonymous, was ahead of her time. Not surprisingly, she was considered eccentric and earned the nickname Mad Madge . Her works gained popularity in the 1980s.

Basho was a Japanese poet of the Edo period. Regarded as the greatest master of haiku , Basho's poetry is read all over the world; many of his works have been translated into English. Such is his popularity that in 1979 a crater on planet Mercury was named after him by the International Astronomical Union .

Seventeenth-century French author Jean de La Fontaine is best remembered for his Fables . Initially a forest inspector, he later attended the salons of aristocratic patrons, where he met scholars, authors, and philosophers. Though he faced royal opposition, he was eventually made a part of the French Academy .

Though a witty author, John Harington is better remembered as the inventor of the flush toilet. He was banished from the royal court for the cockiness of his language in his written works. He also earned a knighthood and later came to be known as Queen Elizabeth’s “saucy godson.”

Spanish Baroque dramatist Lope de Vega was one of the most significant figures of the Spanish Golden Age. He had initially aspired to be a priest but abandoned his plans after falling in love with a married woman. He is best remembered for works such as The Dog in the Manger .

Born into a family of lawyers, Pierre Corneille, too, initially studied law. However, both he and his younger brother, noted playwright Thomas Corneille, deviated from their family profession. Part of the Society of Five Authors , selected by Cardinal de Richelieu, Corneille later grew into one of the greatest 17th-century tragedians.

French classical author Francois de La Rochefoucauld is best known for his use of the maxime , a French epigram. He had initially been part of the army that fought against the Spanish. He later grew up to be the quintessential 17th-century nobleman. His Mémoires and Maximes are his most-talked-about works.

One of the greatest biographers of the 17th century, Izaak Walton was also a lover of fishing and had penned one of the most detailed treatises on fishing, The Compleat Angler . His notable works also include his biographies on John Donne and Henry Wotton. He was also a staunch Royalist.

Spanish nobleman, politician and writer Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, KOS of the Baroque era is counted among the most prominent writers of Spain's Golden Age. Quevedo adhered to the conceptismo style compared to his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora’s culteranismo style. His notable works include the picaresque novel El Buscón and the satirical prose Los Sueños .

Known as The Great Montrose , James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose was not just a Scottish nobleman and military leader but also a talented poet. He won many battles for Charles I but was defeated in the Battle of Carbisdale, following which he was hanged to death in the Edinburgh marketplace.

Spanish baroque author and philosopher Baltasar Gracian was a leading proponent of the conceptismo style. Inspired by his priest uncle, he took Jesuit vows. His notable works include Subtlety and the Art of Genius and the three-part novel The Critick , with the latter written under a pseudonym.

Best remembered for penning the lines "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," poet Robert Herrick wrote everything from elegies to love songs and religious verse, and was inspired by English folklore. He was a true Cavalier poet, who wrote verses in support of King Charles I.

Otto von Guericke was a German inventor, scientist, and politician. He made several significant contributions to the development of the Scientific Revolution . He is also credited with inventing the first air pump which he used effectively to study the phenomenon of vacuum. His studies and observation helped reveal the fact that light unlike sound can travel through a vacuum.

François Fénelon was a French writer, poet, theologian, and Catholic archbishop. He is best remembered for his book The Adventures of Telemachus, which was published in 1699. François Fénelon also served as a tutor of Louis, Duke of Burgundy, guiding the character formation of Louis, Grand Dauphin's eldest son.

Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana was an Indian poet who served in the court of Mughal Emperor Akbar. He was counted among the Navaratnas , Akbar's nine important ministers. Rahim is best remembered for his couplets and books on astrology.

Richard Baxter was an English poet, theologian, hymnodist, controversialist, and Puritan church leader. He was one of the most influential and important leaders of the Nonconformists. Today, he is commemorated in the Church of England with a feast day on 14 June.

English geographer Richard Hakluyt is remembered for his marked political influence and his continuous support of the British colonization of North America. A priest, he was associated with the Westminster Abbey . He also penned reports such as Discourse of Western Planting , which was appreciated by Queen Elizabeth I.

Baroque painter and poet Salvator Rosa was born near Naples, to a land surveyor father, who wanted him to become a priest or a lawyer. However, Rosa deviated to art. Initially devoted to landscapes, he later focused on religious art. He is remembered as a pioneer of the Neapolitan school.

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