John Suckling, Sessions of the Poets

Glyn Pursglove (Swansea University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.04: English Writing and Culture of the Seventeenth Century, 1625-1688.
Vol. editors: Jennifer Brady (Rhodes College), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Neil Forsyth (Université de Lausanne), Claire Preston (Queen Mary, University of London), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1637

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Commentary / Criticism (literary)

Resources

Suckling's satirical account of some of his contemporaries (and himself) can be dated to 1637 on the evidence of a manuscript in the Cranfield Papers which carries the date “Septembr 1637”. In a letter of October 1637 George Garrard refers to a “Ballad made of the Wits sung to the King when he was in the New Forest” and this may well refer to Suckling's poem. In the manuscript of 1637 the poem is entitled “The Wits”; when printed in Fragmenta Aurea (1646) it carried the title “A Sessions of the Poets” and it is by this title that it has become best known (though the earlier title seems more likely to be authorial). It has been suggested that the poem's satirical presentation of what Dr. Johnson called “…

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598 words

Citation: Pursglove, Glyn. "Sessions of the Poets". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 October 2000 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2140, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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