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Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

LINKS

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=312

This link connects you to the Academy of American Poets. Here you will find an exhibit on Andrew Marvell including a biography, online primary texts, criticism, bibliographic information, and additional links.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/

This link connects you to the Luminarium web site containing Andrew Marvell's poetry, essays, a biography of the poet's life, and additional links.

BIOGRAPHY

The son of a minister, Andrew Marvell was born in the Yorkshire town of Hull and at age twelve he attended Trinity College, Cambridge. At the age of sixteen, he published poems written in Latin and Greek in an anthology of Cambridge poets. Graduating with a B.A. in 1639, Marvell began his studies toward an M.A., but his advanced degree work was interrupted when his father drowned in the Hull estuary. During the 1640s, Marvell traveled on the Continent and became a tutor in the 1650s, the decade that he most likely wrote his most enduring lyrics. Owing to his friendship with the poet John Milton, Marvell was appointed his Latin secretary from 1657 to 1660 when he was elected to Parliament. A consummate politician, Marvell held office under Cromwell as well as during the Restoration. His posthumously published satires present sharp and witty criticisms of those loyal to both the Royalist and Republican causes. Not just a closet satirist, however, Marvell used his political influence to free Milton from jail after the Restoration and served on diplomatic journeys to Holland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Although now remembered for such masterful carpe diem lyrics as "To His Coy Mistress," pastoral lyrics such as "The Garden," and political odes such as "An Horation Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland," Marvell published very little during his lifetime. It was not until 1681, three years after his death, that his nephew published Marvell's verse under the title Miscellaneous Poems.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Healy, Thomas, Ed. Andrew Marvell. New York: Longman, 1998.

Patterson, Annabel M. Marvell: The Writer in Public Life. New York: Longman, 2000.

Ray, Robert H. An Andrew Marvell Companion. New York: Garland, 1998.

Rees, Christine. The Judgment of Marvell. New York: Pinter, 1989.

Summers, Claude J. and Ted-Larry Pebworth, Eds. On the Celebrated and Neglected Poems of Andrew Marvell. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992.

Wheeler, Thomas. Andrew Marvell Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1996.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER