Lords of Wine and Oile ─ Community and Conviviality in the Poetry of Robert Herrick

'Lords of Wine and Oile' provides a long overdue book-length appraisal of the major seventeenth-century poet Robert Herrick. The collection reads his poetry in the context of his literary, musical, political, and religious affiliations and looks at how he both presents and constructs ideals of community through his work. Herrick is best known for his poetry's grace, good humour, and tolerant inclusiveness, characteristics at odds with the publication of his work close to the end of the Civil Wars. His collection places Herrick's poetry in a much wider chronological context beginning with his early career as a manuscript poet in Jacobean London. Contributors present original research to situate Herrick within the coteries of Ben Jonson and Thomas Stanley, uncover the Royalism of Herrick's publishers, and identify the printer of Hesperides. Others examine how the context of publication in 1648 gives a political colouring to Herrick's imitations of Ovid and Anacreon and how Herrick, like Katherine Philips, uses the theme of friendship and the mode of print to construct an idea of the autonomous author. Two essays explore Herrick's musical collaborations with Henry Lawes, the first such work since 1976, and analyse the influence of musical settings and group performance on the interpretation of Herrick's lyrics. The collection also showcases an important debate on the challenges posed by Herrick's work, which consciously rejects competitive anxiety and narrative momentum, for historicist and postmodernist literary criticism. Contributors include Stella Achilleos, Line Cottegnies, John Creaser, Achsah Guibbory, Stacey Jocoy, Leah Marcus, Katharine Eisaman Maus, Nicholas McDowell, Michelle O'Callaghan, Graham Parry, Syrithe Pugh, and Richard Wistreich.

Ruth Connolly is a lecturer in seventeenth-century literature at the School of English, Newcastle University. She has published on early modern women's writing and on the influence of Herrick's experience of manuscript circulation on the construction of Hesperides. She is currently co-editing Robert Herrick: The Complete Poetry for Oxford University Press.


Tom Cain has recently retired as Professor of Early Modern Literature from the School of English in Newcastle University. He has published widely on Herrick and Donne and edited Poetaster for the Revels series, Sejanus for the Cambridge edition of Jonson's Works, the Poetry of Mildmay Fane for Manchester University Press and is currently co-editing Robert Herrick: The Complete Poetry for Oxford University Press.