Andrew Marvell is today regarded as one of the finest lyric poets of the seventeenth century, but comparatively little is known of his influential political career. Yet during his own lifetime the reverse was true: famed as a patriot and satirist, it was not until the 1920s that his introspective poetry was discovered and achieved full recognition. Nicholas Murray's riveting biography explores the life and work of a man torn between a love of creative solitude and the demands of public life, whose achievment in such contrasting spheres afford him a unique place in the history of English literature.
