Product Description

Andrew Marvell (1621-78) enjoys an unrivalled reputation based on the popularity of poems like TO HIS COY MISTRESS, yet his life has often seemed puzzling and enigmatic. In the first fully comprehensive biography of Marvell since the 1960s, the poet emerges for the first time as an important figure in the political as well as the poetic life of his time. Marvell lived through one of the most turbulent periods in English history and, after the Civil War and the Commonwealth, he became a Member of Parliament at the Restoration, serving the town of Hull until his death nearly two decades later. These political events enter his poems, sometimes directly, as in the famous HORATIAN Ode on Oliver Cromwell, sometimes indirectly as in his deceptively formal pastoral and lyric verse. This biography attempts to present an integrated portrait of Marvell the poet and the politician and to show that for Marvell poetry and politics were not opposed activities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1296814 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 342 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ever since T.S. Eliot claimed in 1921 that Andrew Marvell and his poetry "spoke more clearly and unequivocally with the voice of his literary age than does Milton", this most elusive of 17th-century Metaphysical poets has been celebrated as one of the finest in the English language. However, as Nicholas Murray is at pains to point out in his biography World Enough and Time: The Life of Andrew Marvell, this perception of the author of "To His Coy Mistress" and the "Horatian Ode" is a peculiarly 20th-century impression. Throughout his lifetime and the subsequent centuries Marvell was more generally known as a biting satirist, political pamphleteer, and dedicated Member of Parliament for Hull during one of the most turbulent periods of English political history.

Squaring the poet with the politician, Murray comes up with a strangely unattractive figure, an intellectual opportunist and political survivor, who shifted from Royalist to Republican camps in the wake of the Civil War, the execution of Charles I, and the rise of Cromwell, before once more embracing the monarchy in the wake of the Restoration and the reign of Charles II. What emerges is a man who "enjoyed the art of politicking and what would now be called lobbying", to whom poetry came second best to political life, and whose verse "is not a poetry of personality". While Murray battles valiantly with Marvell's intrigues as a scholar, linguist, MP, traveller and spy, and animates his account with stories of Marvell's relations with the embattled Milton and his arch-rival Samuel Parker, the Archbishop of Oxford, the poet hardly leaps off the page. Marvell is so intangible that in his penultimate chapter Murray resorts to asking rather despairingly "Was Andrew Marvell gay?" In focussing on the minutiae of Marvell's political life some may feel that Murray loses sight of the poetry, which is cursorily read through what appear to be rather bland critical binoculars. World Enough and Time is detailed and exhaustive, and will be of interest to Marvell scholars and those interested in the 17th century, but the general reader may find the biographer's prose a little heavy-going. T.S. Eliot called Marvell "a lukewarm partisan". Nicholas Murray's biography presents us with a similarly tepid Marvell. --Jerry Brotton

Review
'An intelligent and sensitive reader of the life' Literary Review 'Ever since T.S. Eliot claimed in 1921 that Andrew Marvell and his poetry "spoke more clearly and unequivocally with the voice of his literary age than does Milton", this most elusive of 17th-century Metaphysical poets has been celebrated as one of the finest in the English language. However, as Nicholas Murray is at pains to point out in his biography World Enough and Time: The Life of Andrew Marvell, this perception of the author of "To His Coy Mistress" and the "Horatian Ode" is a peculiarly 20th-century impression. Throughout his lifetime and the subsequent centuries Marvell was more generally known as a biting satirist, political pamphleteer, and dedicated Member of Parliament for Hull during one of the most turbulent periods of English political history. Squaring the poet with the politician, Murray comes up with a strangely unattractive figure, an intellectual opportunist and political survivor, who shifted from Royalist to Republican camps in the wake of the Civil War, the execution of Charles I, and the rise of Cromwell, before once more embracing the monarchy in the wake of the Restoration and the reign of Charles II. What emerges is a man who "enjoyed the art of politicking and what would now be called lobbying", to whom poetry came second best to political life, and whose verse "is not a poetry of personality". While Murray battles valiantly with Marvell's intrigues as a scholar, linguist, MP, traveller and spy, and animates his account with stories of Marvell's relations with the embattled Milton and his arch-rival Samuel Parker, the Archbishop of Oxford, the poet hardly leaps off the page. Marvell is so intangible that in his penultimate chapter Murray resorts to asking rather despairingly "Was Andrew Marvell gay?" In focussing on the minutiae of Marvell's political life some may feel that Murray loses sight of the poetry, which is cursorily read through what appear to be rather bland critical binoculars. World Enough and Time is detailed and exhaustive, and will be of interest to Marvell scholars and those interested in the 17th century, but the general reader may find the biographer's prose a little heavy-going. T.S. Eliot called Marvell "a lukewarm partisan". Nicholas Murray's biography presents us with a similarly tepid Marvell.' Jerry Brotton, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW 'Timely and comprehensive...Murray brings a much needed and informed freshness of insight' SPECTATOR

About the Author
Nicholas Murray was born in Liverpool in 1952. He has written acclaimed biographies of the writer Bruce Chatwin and Victorian poet Matthew Arnold. He is married and lives in the Welsh Marches.

Customer Reviews

Scholarly but a little uneven
The rating should really be 3.5.
This is a scholarly, generally quite comprehensive account of one of the 17th century's finest and most diverse poets. Murray is good at giving detail as to how we know what we know about Marvell and explaining the problems with sources and contemporary accounts. This might be a little mind-boggling and seem pointless to the ordinary reader, however, so beware - this is definitely a book based on facts and not a gripping 'story' of Marvell's life and times.
Nevertheless, the prose is readable if dense with information and I found Murray's style likable enough.
The main problem is that this biography is a bit uneven. There are a few short investigations of his actual poetry but these are few and tend to scratch the surface so that the reader is left wondering what the point of beginning was. Occasionally poetry is used to illustrate a point about Marvell's life but this is so unevenly done that it feels messy. It may have been better to exclude any real detail on the poetry or (preferably) to write a biography more heavily engaged with the actual work of this man who was equally poet and man of his times.