Selected Poems

A new and comprehensive selection of Dryden's poetry, revealing him as a master of theatricality, ventriloquism, and unmistakable originality.

In his lifetime, John Dryden gained fame at the cost first of gossip and scandal and then of suspicion and scorn. He wrote to order, currying favor with the Crown and repeatedly savaging its enemies. Yet the finest works of his political and spiritual imagination- "Absalom and Achitophel" and "The Hind and the Panther"-develop the themes of envy, ambition, and misdeed in ways that far transcend their era. During the Glorious Revolution, Dryden fell from patronage and favor: he then transformed himself into perhaps the greatest of English translators, a superb interpreter of Virgil and Horace, Juvenal and Persius, Boccaccio and Chaucer. This edition contains a preface and annotations accompanying each poem, modernized spelling and punctuation, and an informative introduction and chronology.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.