John Stubbs was born in 1977 and studied English at Oxford and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge where he completed a doctorate in 2005. Donne: The Reformed Soul was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Reprobates was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
Swaggeringly splendid...Stubbs is a brilliant expositor of
poetry...one cannot resist being carried along the sheer boldness
of the charge and the brilliance and élan of its execution
*Sunday Telegraph*
Terrific . . . This is good roustabout stuff but there is subtlety
here too. Stubbs show us, tactfully, that everything we thought we
knew about the difference between cavaliers and roundheads is
probably wrong
*Guardian*
An entertaining and ambitious work that intelligently binds
together the art and the politics of mid-17th-century England. Its
cast of characters could hardly be bettered
*Financial Times*
A wonderful survey of the period...extraordinary snapshots of an
era that makes our own seem mean, lazy and shamefully
inarticulate
*Evening Standard*
The subtle but powerful light that Stubbs casts on [cavalier life
in Stuart England] illuminates also the Puritanism of roundhead
England. Stubbs writes that 'literary talent and psychological
realism' of the cavalier poets makes them 'precious witnesses of an
age'. They are among the qualities that make him one too
*Spectator*
Fascinating
*Daily Express*
Excellent...affectionate but forensic...with considerable skill and
insight, Stubbs brings to life an age, a literary movement and, for
all their many faults, a group of individuals whose commitment to
the king's cause helped to shape the history of England
*Literary Review*
Intriguing and immaculately researched
*Time Out*
A thoughtful depiction of opposed ideas and mad mutual
destruction
*The Times*
Stubbs's fresh and resourceful prose keeps the reader engaged,
while he finds countless ingenious ways to draw the literary and
political elements together
*Telegraph*
Explores the gilded artistic world of Charles I's court with almost
effortless brilliance...marvelously incisive, learned and moving.
There is plenty of substance in Stubbs book - and plenty of wit,
too
*Sunday Times*
The 17th-century showdown between Charles I and Parliament is fought as much with rhymes as with muskets in this scintillating literary-historical study of the royalist worldview. Biographer Stubbs (John Donne: The Reformed Soul) profiles a clique of Jacobean writers dubbed Cavaliers for their "reprobate" frivolity, including the wastrel gambler and rake Sir John Suckling; poet laureate William Davenant, who lost his nose to syphilis; and poet Robert Herrick, whose line "Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may" distilled the Cavalier ethos. Their rallying to the king owed much to privilege and patronage, but the author also situates them in a culture war, pitting the pomp, revelry, theater going, witticisms, bawdiness, and light misogyny of the Cavaliers against the austerity, sternness, church-going, sermonizing, primness, and heavy misogyny whose gather-ye-potatoes-and-ammunition mentality won the war. Stubbs entwines an absorbing montage of the era's politics and shooting wars with searching exegeses of the verse, drama, and lavishly symbolic masques through which his protagonists reimagined the upheaval. Blending subtle aesthetics with entertaining picaresque, this is an entrancing, highly original account of Merrye Olde England locked in a losing battle with no-nonsense modernity-and of the compensating rise of a still-potent Cavalier sensibility of joie de vivre, romantic individualism, and pained elegy. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
The English Civil War, fought in the 1640s, was a protracted struggle pitting the parliamentary army-the Roundheads-against supporters of the royalist cause-the Cavaliers. The results determined where power would lay in England, Scotland, and Ireland thereafter. Stubbs (John Donne: The Reformed Soul) weaves a narrative tale around these Cavaliers, moving readers away from the stereotypical vision of them in their feathered hats and showing their "depth and variety" across many years. They included the so-called Cavalier Poets and other supporters of the crown, from the refined to the degenerate, during much of the 17th century. Stubbs uses the perspectives of such men as Sir William Davenant, Sir John Suckling, and Robert Herrick within the context of historical details of the era, including the backstories about the monarch these men were defending. Stubbs uses the Cavaliers' own poetry and letters to good effect, bringing familiar (e.g., "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may") and less familiar lines into greater depth. Verdict This well-researched and well-written volume will best serve the student of British history and literature who is focusing on this crucial era.-Elizabeth Nelson, UOP Lib., Des Plaines, IL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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