ABRAHAM COWLEY (1618–1667)
A VOLUME OF ESSAYS
Contributions are invited towards a volume of essays on the poet and natural philosopher Abraham Cowley (1618–1667), with publication designed to coincide with the quatercentenary of his birth. Author of The civil war, the Davideis and the Pindarique odes, Cowley made a deep impression on seventeenth-century poetry, attested by his extravagant funeral and his burial – next to Chaucer and Spenser – in Westminster Abbey. Ejected from Cambridge for his royalist sympathies, he saw long service as an agent for the royalist party on the continent, before returning to England. There, he made his peace with the Cromwellian regime and, at the Restoration, immersed himself in experimental science (botany) and the early workings of the Royal Society. The last book-length study of a poet considered by his contemporaries to be the peer of Milton was David Trotter’s The Poetry of Abraham Cowley (1979). At a time when interest in royalists and royalism is burgeoning, this collection aims to provide the modern critical attention Cowley’s life and writings merit. Chapter proposals of c.250 words on any literary or biographical aspect of Cowley should be emailed to the editor, Philip Major, by 30 June 2017. I am particularly interested in receiving proposals on the scientific interests of Cowley, hence use of the Mersenne forum.
Dr Philip Major
Birkbeck, University of London
Email address: [log in to unmask]
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