Steven Zwicker was born in California and graduated from Brown University; he is Stanley Elkin Professor of Humanities and Professor of English Emeritus at Washington University where he has directed a number of literary programmes, including the Literature and History Program; the Mellon Postdoctoral Program; and the Mellon Summer Dissertation Seminar Program. He has held visiting appointments at The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, and the California Institute of Technology and was British Academy Visiting Lecturer at the Universities of Liverpool and Aberdeen.

• Introduction


• Note on the Text


• Heroique Stanzas (1659)


• Astræa Redux (1660)


• To the Lady Castlemaine (c.1664)


• Annus Mirabilis (1667)


• An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668)


• Of Heroique Playes (1672)


• Dryden to John Wilmot, earl of Rochester (April May 1673)


• Marriage A-la-Mode (1673)


• Mac Flecknoe (c.1676)


• Dryden to Lord Latimer (July 1677)


• All for Love (1678)


• Absalom and Achitophel (1681)


• The Medall (1682)


• Religio Laici (1682)


• To the Memory of Mr. Oldham (1684)


• From Sylvæ (1685)


• Preface


• Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, The Latter Part of the Third Book (Against the Fear of Death)


• Lucretius, De Rerum Natura , The Fourth Book (Concerning the Nature of Love)


• Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book the Fifth


• Horace, Odes 1.9


• Horace, Odes 3.29


• To the Pious Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew (1686)


• Dryden to Sir George Etherege (February 1687)


• The Hind and the Panther (1687)


• A Song for St Cecilia s Day (1687)


• Lines on Milton (1688)


• Eleonora (1692)


• From The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis (1693)


• Juvenal, Satire 3


• The Fable of Acis, Polyphemus, and Galatea (1693)


• Dryden to John Dennis (March 1693)


• Dryden to Jacob Tonson (30 August 1693)


• Dryden to William Walsh (12 December 1693)


• To my Dear Friend Mr. Congreve (1694)


• To Sir Godfrey Kneller (1694)


• Dryden to Jacob Tonson (29 October 1695)


• An Ode, on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell (1696)


• The Life of Lucian (1696)


• From The Works of Virgil (1697)


• Pastoral 10


• Georgics 4


• Æneis 6


• Alexander s Feast (1697)


• Dryden to Jacob Tonson (December 1697)


• Lines on Tonson (c.1698)


• Dryden to the duchess of Ormond (Winter 1698)


• From Fables (1700)


• Preface


• To Her Grace the Dutchess of Ormond


• To My Honour'd Kinsman, John Driden, of Chesterton


• The Wife of Bath Her Tale from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales


• Dryden to Mrs Elizabeth Steward (11 April 1700)


• Prologue, Epilogue, and The Secular Masque for Fletcher s The Pilgrim (1700)


• Commentary


• Biographical Appendix


• Index of Titles

This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the poetry and prose of John Dryden, the most important poet, dramatist, translator, and literary theorist of the later seventeenth century.