Edmund Waller, Instructions to a Painter

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 1665

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

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Waller's

Instructions to a Painter

has an importance in the history of English poetry rather greater than the one its own relatively modest qualities might suggest. The poem's full title was

Instructions to a painter, for the drawing of a picture of the state and posture of the English forces at sea, under the command of His Royal Highness in the conclusion of the year 1664

. Its first publication was as a broadside. An expanded second edition (1666) added to essentially the same title a clause to explain that the poem dealt with

the battel & victory obtained over the Dutch, June 3, 1665

. In 1658 Waller contributed commendatory verses to a translation, by his friend Sir Thomas Higgons, of the Italian poet Giovanni Francesco Busenello's poem (addressed to the painter Pietro Liberi) in…

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421 words

Citation: Pursglove, Glyn. "Instructions to a Painter". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 October 2000 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4463, accessed 25 November 2024.]

Edmund Waller, Instructions to a Painter

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