This is the first newly prepared, complete edition of Henry Vaughan's poetry and prose for over a century. In the introduction, the reader will find an up-to-date biography of Vaughan, a substantial history of developments in Vaughan scholarship and criticism from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, and full bibliographical descriptions of each of the volumes published in the author's lifetime. The texts carefully reproduce original spelling and punctuation, with textual variants and significant editorial emendations made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries noted at the foot of the page for easy reference. Vaughan's volumes are printed in the order of their first publication and each is introduced by a brief essay on the date and circumstances of its publication, its historical and literary contexts, and the nature of its contents. Vaughan's surviving letters are also included, and appendices print additional poems found in other volumes, poems of dubious ascription, and marginalia made in medical books owned by Vaughan. The third volume contains the commentary on prose works and poems. The notes on the poetry take into consideration material derived from scholarly and critical work published over the past forty years, and the edition locates Vaughan's translations and original prose texts firmly, and for the first time, in the complex religious, political, and intellectual contexts of the mid-seventeenth century. The third volume also contains a substantial bibliography and an index.

Donald R. Dickson's profile page

Alan Rudrum's profile page

Robert Wilcher's profile page

Donald R. Dickson is Professor of English at Texas AandM University, where he has lectured since 1981. He has been awarded fellowships by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (in 2016, and from 1992 to 1993), the American Council on Education (in 2000), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (in 1983). He is editor of the book review journal Seventeenth Century News and textual editor for the Letters of John Donne (Oxford, forthcoming). His books include The Tessera of Antilia: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century (Brill, 1998) and The Fountain of Living Waters: The Typology of the Waters of Life in Herbert, Vaughan, and Traherne (University of Missouri Press, 1987), and he co-edited, with Holly Faith Nelson, Of Paradise and Light: Essays on Henry Vaughan and John Milton in Honor of Alan Rudrum (University of Delaware Press, 2004).

Alan Rudrum is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University, Canada. His principal interests are in early modern literature and theology, and he has previously taught at the University of Adelaide, Queen's University of Belfast, and the University of California. He is the author of A Critical Commentary on Paradise Lost (Macmillan, 1966), A Critical Commentary on Comus and Shorter Poems (Macmillan, 1967), Modern Judgements on Milton (Macmillan, 1968), A Critical Commentary on Samson Agonistes (Macmillan, 1969), The Complete Poems of Henry Vaughan (Penguin, 1976; Yale University Press, 1981) Writers of Wales: Henry Vaughan (University of Wales Press and the Welsh Arts Council, 1981), The Works of Thomas Vaughan (Clarendon Press, 1984), Essential Articles on Henry Vaughan (Archon Books, 1986), and The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse and Prose (Broadview Press, 2000; with Associate Editors Holly Nelson and Joseph Black).

Robert Wilcher is Emeritus Reader in Early Modern Studies at the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute. He has previously taught at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and All Saints' Colleges, Leeds (1968-1972). He is the author of Andrew Marvell (CUP, 1985), Understanding Arnold Wesker (University of South Carolina Press, 1991), The Writing of Royalism 1628-1660 (CUP, 2001), The Discontented Cavalier: The Work of Sir John Suckling in its Social, Religious, Political and Literary Contexts (University of Delaware Press, 2007), the editor of Andrew Marvell: Selected Poetry and Prose (Methuen English Texts, 1986), and the co-editor of Henry Vaughan and the Usk Valley (Logaston Press, 2016).