Rochester, Dryden and Swift

A symbol for much Restoration and Augustan literature generally.

The BBC's British history timeline, from the Neolithic to last week, and the segment that includes the Restoration (when Rochester wrote).

Fair copy of a Restoration satire manuscript.

Founding the Royal Society. Research in mathematics and natural history.

A famous portrait of Lord Rochester.

Rochester's verse satire against King Charles II.

Rochester's poem "The Disabled Debauchee."

Rochester's poem in tercets "Upon Nothing."

One nothing. Another nothing. And another; and another?

Not this guy.

St Patrick's Cathedral, in Dublin.

A Jonathan Swift timeline.

First edition Gulliver.

An adult Houyhnhnm.

A sort of Yahoo.

Another sort of Yahoo.

Swift in a lady's dressing room. Lady Montagu responds.

John Dryden's selected works from the University of Toronto site; Dryden's elegy to John Oldham. Dryden's St. Cecilia (1687).

Dryden's monument in Westminster Abbey.

St. Cecilia with Two Angels, by A. Gramatica (1620).

A Baroque violin.

G. F. Handel's music (1739) for Dryden's ode.

On the tradition of St. Cecilia's Day odes in London

W. H. Auden's St. Cecilia poem (1940s) (nonacademic site, but the text is accurate).

Cecilia's particular instrument.

Montagu's desirable lover.

first lecture: Let's Go British and Irish Literature

Britain.

Writing it down.

A lot of authors: Pope and Austen and Hopkins and future cops and an Oscar.

Johnny Depp as Lord Rochester.

More to see.

Poetry can be like this and like this and like this and like this and also this and like this and like this and like this, even.

Let's. No, Let's.

We may not get to read her.

We could go here.

Sam Riviere tweets.

Daljit Nagra writes and translates.

We'll meet him. And possibly hear her. And see scary hats.

You can also write about him, or her, or him.

UCL.

Hogarth's painting of a scene from The Beggar's Opera.

William Blake's title page for Songs of Innocence and Experience.

A beautiful lake in Wordworth's Lake District.

The astonishingly useful Victorian Web, and the Crystal Palace interior.

The young Auden.

Poems:

Matthew Prior, "A Simile."
William Cowper (pronounced "Cooper"), "The Castaway."
Stevie Smith, "Not Waving But Drowning."
Charlotte Mew, "Fin de Fête," and Mew, "From a Window."
Denise Riley, "Not What You Think."
Jen Hadfield, "Aa"