Keith Walker & Nicholas Fisher 
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester 
The Poems and Lucina’s Rape

Building on the strength of Keith Walker’s acclaimed The
Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1984), leading scholar
Nicholas Fisher presents a thoroughly revised and updated edition
of the work of one the greatest Restoration wits.

* Includes the text of Lucina’s Rape, Rochester’s
adaptation of Fletcher’s revenge tragedy Valentinian,
in a text that readily identifies Rochester’s revisions

* Presents the poems in versions that were current during
Rochester’s lifetime, allowing the reader to experience the
poems as Rochester’s contemporaries did

* Incorporates insights and discoveries made over the last
twenty-five years and texts of manuscripts that previously were
unavailable for study

Table of Content

List of Illustrations viii

Note on This Edition ix

Acknowledgments x

Chronology xii

Introduction xvii

Further Reading xxviii

Abbreviations xxxii

Poems

Juvenilia 1

Love Poems 5

Translations 56

Prologues and Epilogues 61

Satires and Lampoons 68

Poems to Mulgrave and Scroope 111

Epigrams, Impromptus, Jeux d’esprit, etc. 131

Poems Less Securely Attributed to Rochester 138

Lucina’s Rape or the Tragedy of Vallentinian 161

Index of Proper Names 253

Index of Titles and First Lines 257

About the author

Nicholas Fisher is an associate research fellow at the
Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University
of London. He has co-edited a performing edition of the early
settings of Rochester’s songs, Songs to Phillis
(1999), and has edited a collection of essays on the poet, That
Second Bottle (2000). He is currently completing a
bibliography of the printed editions of Rochester’s work.

Keith Walker taught at University College, London from 1966
to 1996. Over the course of his notable career he produced
distinguished editions of the works of many of the major
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century writers, including The Poems of
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1984), on which this new edition is
based.