Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, Vol. III

The Caroline poets wrote in the shadow of the scaffold. This volume gathers five poets who flourished during the reign of Charles I, when England teetered between refinement and revolution. John Cleveland, the most notorious of the bunch, built poems like architectural puzzles all twisted wit and deliberate difficulty. Thomas Stanley brought a smoother elegance, equally at home translating Pindar or writing on love's deceits. Henry King buried his bishop's mitre to compose some of the period's most affecting elegies on death. Thomas Flatman distilled everything into three or four perfect lines. Nathaniel Whiting added his voice to the mix. George Saintsbury compiled this edition in 1905, wrestling with manuscripts, weeding out false attributions, and making their work accessible again. These are not the Cavalier greats, but they wrote with a specificity of feeling and a baroque entanglement of thought that rewards patient reading. For anyone curious about what poetry sounded like in the decades before Milton went blind and England executed its king.