This is the first newly prepared, complete edition of Henry Vaughan's poetry and prose for over a century. In the introduction, the reader will find an up-to-date biography of Vaughan, a substantial history of developments in Vaughan scholarship and criticism from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, and full bibliographical descriptions of each of the volumes published in the author's lifetime. The texts carefully reproduce original spelling and punctuation, with textual variants and significant editorial emendations made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries noted at the foot of the page for easy reference. Vaughan's volumes are printed in the order of their first publication and each is introduced by a brief essay on the date and circumstances of its publication, its historical and literary contexts, and the nature of its contents. Vaughan's surviving letters are also included, and appendices print additional poems found in other volumes, poems of dubious ascription, and marginalia made in medical books owned by Vaughan. The third volume contains the commentary on prose works and poems. The notes on the poetry take into consideration material derived from scholarly and critical work published over the past forty years, and the edition locates Vaughan's translations and original prose texts firmly, and for the first time, in the complex religious, political, and intellectual contexts of the mid-seventeenth century. The third volume also contains a substantial bibliography and an index.

The publication of The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Verse and Prose is a literary event; this comprehensive volume is the first anthology of the period to reflect the breadth of seventeenth-century studies in recent decades. Over one hundred writers are included, from John Chamberlain at the beginning of the century to Elisabeth Singer Rowe at its end. There are generous selections from the work of all major writers, and a representation of the work of virtually every writer of significance. The work of women writers figures prominently, with extensive selections not only from canonical writers such as Behn and Bradstreet, but also from other writers (such as Katherine Philips and Margaret Cavendish) who have been receiving considerable scholarly attention in recent years. The anthology is broadly inclusive, with writing from America as well as from the British Isles. Memoirs, letters, political texts, travel writing, prophetic literature, street ballads, and pamphlet literature are all here, as is a full representation of the literary poetry and prose of the period, including the poetry of Jonson; the prose of Bacon; the metaphysical poetry of Donne, Herbert, Marvell, and others; the lyric verse of Herrick; and substantial selections from the poetry and prose of Milton and Dryden. (While Samson Agonistes is included in its entirety, Milton's epic poems have been excluded, in order to allow space for other works not so readily accessible elsewhere.) The editors have included complete works wherever possible. A headnote by the editors introduces each author, and each selection has been newly annotated.