Table of Contents

List of Illustrations viii

Note on This Edition ix

Acknowledgments x

Chronology xii

Introduction xvii

Further Reading xxviii

Abbreviations xxxii

Poems

Juvenilia 1

Love Poems 5

Translations 56

Prologues and Epilogues 61

Satires and Lampoons 68

Poems to Mulgrave and Scroope 111

Epigrams, Impromptus, Jeux d’esprit, etc. 131

Poems Less Securely Attributed to Rochester 138

Lucina’s Rape or the Tragedy of Vallentinian 161

Index of Proper Names 253

Index of Titles and First Lines 257

About the Author

Nicholas Fisher is an associate research fellow at theInstitute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, Universityof London. He has co-edited a performing edition of the earlysettings of Rochester s songs, Songs to Phillis(1999), and has edited a collection of essays on the poet, ThatSecond Bottle (2000). He is currently completing abibliography of the printed editions of Rochester's work. Keith Walker taught at University College, London from 1966to 1996. Over the course of his notable career he produceddistinguished editions of the works of many of the majorRestoration and Eighteenth-Century writers, including The Poems ofJohn Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1984), on which this new edition isbased.

Reviews

?At last, an indispensable edition of Rochester for all scholars and teachers of the Restoration period. The drama Valentinian/Lucina's Rape is literally a revelation, over one thousand lines of authentic Rochester now visible in bold type.??James Grantham Turner, University of California, Berkeley ?Fisher?s edition of Rochester is not only a fitting and loving tribute to two great Rochesterians, Keith Walker and Harold Love: it is a considerable work of independent scholarship, providing an unmodernized text fully informed by the most authoritative manuscript sources and intelligently annotated. A delicious bonus is the inclusion of Rochester?s version of John Fletcher?s tragedy Valentinian entitled Lucina?s Rape. Rochester is one of the most influential writers not to have appeared extensively in print in his own lifetime. This important edition enables us to understand that influence and evaluate it anew.??Brean Hammond, University of Nottingham "For scholars of seventeenth-century libertine culture and poetry lovers with a penchant for old-school smut, Rochester's verse holds abiding interest. Walker's and Fisher's edition makes these verses accessible to a broad audience, their exhaustive annotations and introductory material offering contextual information invaluable to readers new to this author, or indeed to the seventeenth century." (M/C Reviews, October 2010)