English poetry in the first half of the seventeenth century is an outstandingly rich and varied body of verse, which can be understood and appreciated more fully when set in its cultural and ideological context. This student Companion, consisting of fourteen new introductory essays by scholars of international standing, informs and illuminates the poetry by providing close reading of texts and an exploration of their background. There are individual studies of Donne, Jonson, Herrick, Herbert, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, Milton, Crashaw, Vaughan and Marvell. More general essays describe the political and religious context of the poetry, explore its gender politics, explain the material circumstances of its production and circulation, trace its larger role in the development of genre and tradition, and relate it to contemporary rhetorical expectation. Overall the Companion provides an indispensable guide to the texts and contexts of early-seventeenth-century English poetry.

"Anticipate not your usual dry tome, but a collection determined to make it easier to read English poetry of the first part of the 17th century....Enjoy a discourse on rhetoric, with numerous quotes from writers of the times; or consider an in-depth analysis of John Donne; it's easy to browse." Bookwatch

"...superbly envisioned and carried out in fresh, important, useful essays....There is no bad work here: All the individual studies have value as 'companions' to new readers of the poetry, yet are sophisticated and critically shrewd inquiries....No other current volume does the work of this one." Choice

"Although each of the essays is self-contained and written without reference to others in the collection, they form, when read together, a very satisfying whole. The sophisticated level of the critical discourse of the essays, as well as the authoritative scholarship that informs them, goes well beyond one's usual expectations for such collections." John R. Roberts, Seventeenth-Century News

"...one of the signal virtues of this fine collection is its expert blend of traditional and novel approaches. The entire collection attests at once to the interpretive power of a currently unfashionable mode of criticism that pays attention to genre and provides cogency to the current emphasis on the material transmission of books and manuscripts. One emerges from the collection not with the sense of the enormous distance separating new and old approaches but rather with a refreshing picture of the contiguity of new and old....A fine introduction to the field for ambitious undergraduates and beginning graduate students, it contains more than enough novelty to sustain the interest of specialists." Michael Schoenfeldt, Renaissance Quarterly