Selected Works

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'.

While living a life of reckless debauchery and sexual adventuring, Rochester produced comic verse, scurrilous satires, and highly explicit erotica. His Selected Works, edited by Frank H. Ellis and now available from Penguin Classics, show him to be one of the wittiest and most complex poets of the seventeenth century. With endless literary disguises, rhymes and alliteration, humor and humanity, Rochester''s poems hold up a mirror to the extravagances and absurdities of his age.

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.