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This is the first complete edition of the poetry of Charles Cotton (1630-1687), one of the most interesting poets of the mid-seventeenth century, who wrote in many styles and many voices. Paul Hartle draws upon all of the available manuscripts and early printed editions, and unites the different components of Cotton´s prolific output.

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This is the first complete edition of the poetry of Charles Cotton (1630-1687), one of the most interesting poets of the mid-seventeenth century. Although better known as translator of Montaigne´s Essays and most of all as a fly-fisherman and author of the second part of The Compleat Angler, a classic work which has never been out of print, Cotton´s poetry has attracted notice and admiration across the centuries from readers as diverse as Samuel
Pepys and William Wordsworth. Celebrated in his lifetime as a poet of rural retirement and author of an immensely successful comical travesty of Virgil´s Aeneid, Scarronides (1664-65), his posthumously published Poems on Several Occasions (1689) reveal a poet of many styles and many voices, capable of delicate cavalier
lyric, Restoration bawdry, political passion, and moody Pindaric ode. His self-characterisation in burlesque travelogues and intimate epistles gives a sense of an attractively companionable and engaging writer. This is the first edition of Cotton´s poetry based on consultation of all of the available manuscripts and early printed editions. It contains two major works not hitherto edited as well as full commentary on all texts. In uniting the different parts of Cotton´s prolific output, Paul
Hartle offers readers of his verse a ´Compleat´ Cotton.

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In terms of both its textual analysis and its rich explanatory commentary of over six hundred pages, Hartle´s edition is an achievement of impressive substance. A complete checking of Hartle´s texts against their sources would, of course, involve as much exacting labour as he has expended himself. Suffice it to say that spot-checks against printed sources, together with the general thoroughness and judiciousness of the volumes´ editorial contributions, give one every confidence that the totality of Cotton´s poetical output has now been presented with unprecedented accuracy."- Notes and Queries

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Paul Hartle was educated at Victoria College, Jersey and then at St Catharine´s College, Cambridge. He has a particular interest in the afterlives of the classics and has published widely on the subject. His next project is an account of the presence and perception of Japan in Early Modern British culture.

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