The Poetry of Charles Cotton

This is the first complete edition of the poetry of Charles Cotton (1630-1687), one of the most interesting poets of the mid-seventeenth century. Although better known as translator of Montaigne’s Essays and most of all as a fly-fisherman and author of the second part of The Compleat Angler, a classic work that has never been out of print, Cotton’s poetry has attracted notice and admiration across the centuries from readers as diverse as Samuel Pepys and William Wordsworth. Celebrated in his lifetime as a poet of rural retirement and as author of an immensely successful comical travesty of Virgil’s Aeneid, Scarronides (1664-65), his posthumously published Poems on Several Occasions (1689) reveal a poet of many styles and many voices, capable of delicate cavalier lyric, Restoration bawdry, political passion, and moody Pindaric ode. His self-characterization in burlesque travelogs and intimate epistles gives a sense of an attractively companionable and engaging writer. This is the first edition of Cotton’s poetry based on consultation of all of the available manuscripts and early printed editions. It contains two major works not hitherto edited as well as full commentary on all texts. In uniting the different parts of Cotton’s prolific output, Paul Hartle offers readers of his verse a ＂Compleat＂ Cotton.