Author:Earl of Rochester,Frank H. Ellis

The brightest star at the court of King Charles II, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-80), lived a life of reckless debauchery and sexual adventuring that led to his death at the age of thirty-three - described by Samuel Johnson as having 'blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness'. Rochester was also one of the wittiest and most complex poets of the seventeenth century, writing comic verse, scurrilous satires and highly explicit erotica - from the bawdy self-portrait in 'The Maimed Debauchee' and the tender passion of 'Absent from thee I languish still' to the comic world-weariness of 'Upon Nothing' and 'A Satyr against Mankind', which mocks human follies. With endless literary disguises, rhymes and alliteration, humour and humanity, Rochester's poems hold up a mirror to the extravagances and absurdities of his age.
He is by turns hilarious and subversive, a master of the cheekily surreal, whose conspiratorial mateyness often conceals a grinning skull
—— New StatesmanVery individual, imaginative, fresh work... The poems are disquieting, odd, dark, beautifully honed and cadenced
—— Ruth Padel , Financial TimesAlways original, genuine and generous, Matthew Sweeney's poetry has matured to the point where its artistry can be recognized. He's brilliant on stories that disclose the strange, the ironic, the sad
—— Douglas DunnHere are the small and great truths of the imagination that bursts forth out of our daily lives. Sweeney's poems are reflective, funny, supremely inventive and impeccably written. This is contemporary poetry at its very best
—— Charles SimicOne of our greatest authors... Greene had the sharpest eyes for trouble, the finest nose for human weaknesses, and was pitilessly honest in his observations... For experience of a whole century he was the man within
—— Norman Sherry , IndependentMr Greens' extraordinary power of plot-making, of suspense and of narration...moves continuously both in time and space and in emotion
—— The TimesHis style is spare, that's what is so beautiful. His novels are genuine romans philosophies - novels illustrating ideas
—— Piers Paul ReadIn a class by himself...the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety
—— William Golding