George Herbert

When Wendy Cope developed an interest in poetry, she bought a selection of George Herbert’s verse. She writes of his work: ‘I took to it immediately. What especially appealed to me – and still does – was this poet’s wonderfully playful delight in poetic form, and the fact that these playful poems are, at the same time, utterly serious…There is humour, as well as exuberant inventiveness, in his work, but no one challenges his standing as a seriuos poet, whose primary concern was not to show off but to tell the truth.’ In George Herbert: Verse and Prose, Wendy Cope has brought together a fine selection of Herbert’s poems and introduces us to a little of his prose and a few of his ‘Outlandish Proverbs’. She has also provided an extended introduction to the work of this important seventeenth-century poet.

Author Biography

George Herbert was born in 1593. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and became the Public Orator of the University. In 1626 he was ordained, and became rector of the parish of Bemerton, not far from Salisbury. His poetry is still widely read today and he wrote many of our well-loved hymns such as Teach me, my God and King, and Let all the world in every corner sing. Wendy Cope is a well known poet, who has contributed a programme about George Herbert to BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please. Her best known book of poetry is Making Cocoa for Kinsley Amis.