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

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.