The Cavaliers of the English Civil War

Reprobates

John Stubbs's Reprobates charts the rise and fall of the Cavaliers before, during and after the English Civil War. 
 
From disastrous foreign forays to syphilitic poets, from political intriguing to ambitious young playwrights keen to curry favour with the king, John Stubbs brings alive the vibrant cast of characters that were at the centre of the English Civil War. Stubbs shows the reader just how the country was brought to one of the most destructive moments in its history. 
 
'Dashing and daring, colourful, subtle and provocative . . . stuffed almost to bursting-point with character and incident. Feasting on poems, diaries, plays, masques, letters and biographies, Reprobates introduces us to . . . a flamboyant parade of chancers, dreamers, turncoats, heroes, idiots and hedonists who grab the reader's shoulders and force a drink on us as if in some dim-lit, tallow-smoked tavern of the 1630s'Independent 
 
'Swaggeringly splendid...Stubbs is a brilliant expositor of poetry...one cannot resist being carried along the sheer boldness of the charge and the brilliance and élan of its execution' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph 
 
John Stubbs was born in 1977 and studied English at Oxford and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge where he completed a doctorate in 2005. Donne: The Reformed Soul was published in 2006 and won the Glen Dimplex Irish Writers' Centre New Writer of the Year and a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for non-fiction. It was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

Terrific . . . This is good roustabout stuff but there is subtlety here too. Stubbs show us, tactfully, that everything we thought we knew about the difference between cavaliers and roundheads is probably wrong

An entertaining and ambitious work that intelligently binds together the art and the politics of mid-17th-century England. Its cast of characters could hardly be bettered

A wonderful survey of the period...extraordinary snapshots of an era that makes our own seem mean, lazy and shamefully inarticulate

Swaggeringly splendid...Stubbs is a brilliant expositor of poetry...one cannot resist being carried along the sheer boldness of the charge and the brilliance and élan of its execution

The subtle but powerful light that Stubbs casts on [cavalier life in Stuart England] illuminates also the Puritanism of roundhead England. Stubbs writes that 'literary talent and psychological realism' of the cavalier poets makes them 'precious witnesses of an age'. They are among the qualities that make him one too

Excellent...affectionate but forensic...with considerable skill and insight, Stubbs brings to life an age, a literary movement and, for all their many faults, a group of individuals whose commitment to the king's cause helped to shape the history of England

A thoughtful depiction of opposed ideas and mad mutual destruction

Stubbs's fresh and resourceful prose keeps the reader engaged, while he finds countless ingenious ways to draw the literary and political elements together

Explores the gilded artistic world of Charles I's court with almost effortless brilliance...marvelously incisive, learned and moving. There is plenty of substance in Stubbs book - and plenty of wit, too

John Stubbs was born in 1977 and studied English at Oxford and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge where he completed a doctorate in 2005. Donne: The Reformed Soul was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Reprobates was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CAVALIERS BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR 
 
'Dashing and daring, colourful, subtle and provocative . . . stuffed almost to bursting-point with character and incident. Feasting on poems, diaries, plays, masques, letters and biographies, Reprobates introduces us to . . . a flamboyant parade of chancers, dreamers, turncoats, heroes, idiots and hedonists who grab the reader's shoulders and force a drink on us as if in some dim-lit, tallow-smoked tavern of the 1630s' Independent

The Reformed Soul

John Donne

A fabulously readable and compelling biography in the tradition of Claire Tomalin, shortlisted for the Costa (formerly Whitbread) Biography of the Year

John Stubbs's Donne: the Reformed Soul brings one of Britain's most famous poets - and famous periods in history - to life. 
 
John Donne's life story is inextricably tied up with the fabric of a society in the throes of religious persecution. His family had long been subject to the terror inflicted upon Catholics under the reign of Elizabeth I, and while his brother languished in prison, and his mother and uncles fled to exile in Europe, Donne was consumed by the question of his own faith and by trying to figure out what it is that connects human beings - and keeps them apart. 
 
In his biography of Donne, John Stubbs chronicles not only a long and bitter sectarian conflict, but also the love story of a young couple who broke the rules of their society, and paid the ultimate price. 
From the raucous streets of late sixteenth-century London to the personal and political intrigues of Donne's family and public life, from the horrors of the Reformation to the delight of Donne's poetry, John Stubbs' book is a vivid, dazzling biography of an extraordinary man, as well as a compelling portrait of England at a time of bewildering transformation. 
 
'Magnificent . . . remarkable'Daily Telegraph 
 
'Impressive . . . Fluent, assured and on fire with ideas and enthusiasm, excels at providing Donne with a living context'Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times 
 
John Stubbs was born in 1977 and studied English at Oxford and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge where he completed a doctorate in 2005. Donne: The Reformed Soul was published in 2006 and won the Glen Dimplex Irish Writers' Centre New Writer of the Year and a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for non-fiction. It was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

John Donne's life story is inextricably tied up with the fabric of a society in the throes of religious persecution. His family had long been subject to the terror inflicted upon Catholics under the reign of Elizabeth I, and while his brother languished in prison, and his mother and uncles fled to exile in Europe, Donne was consumed by the question of his own faith and by trying to figure out what it is that connects human beings - and keeps them apart. 
 
In his biography of Donne, John Stubbs chronicles not only a long and bitter sectarian conflict, but also the love story of a young couple who broke the rules of their society, and paid the ultimate price. 
 
From the raucous streets of late sixteenth-century London to the personal and political intrigues of Donne's family and public life, from the horrors of the Reformation to the delight of Donne's poetry, John Stubbs' book is a vivid, dazzling biography of an extraordinary man, as well as a compelling portrait of England at a time of bewildering transformation..

John Stubbs

Stubbs succeeds in offering something delicate, subtle and new. ... In [this] fine and sensitive book, Stubbs restores Swift's writing to its rich religious and cultural contexts without diminishing its autonomy

Stubbs is an ideal guide to the tortuous ins and outs of Swift's time, an age defined by its political and religious conflicts, and their effects on his writing.

In this superb biography, Stubbs succeeds in enabling us to understand the complexities and character of this greatest of writers

John Stubbs handles the intensely complicated political and historical background to Swift's life with admirable deftness and clarity. There have been dozens of lives of Swift. This one, unlike some of its predecessors, is readable, sane, alert and beautifully observed

Stubbs goes further than any [biographer] previously in recreating the world Swift lived and exploring the duality of his character. ... [Along] with beautifully crafted lines... Another feature of Stubb's biography is its vast historical scholarship. As well as giving us a thoroughly credible Swift, this is a riveting account of English and Irish life in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. If there can be a definitive life of Jonathan Swift, this is it

Stubbs offers a kinder, rather admiring inspection of the great fighter and ruthless truth-teller

An entertaining and ambitious work that intelligently binds together the art and the politics of mid-17th-century England

On fire with ideas and enthusiasm, excels at providing Donne with a living context

Highly readable, dashing as well as detailed

The Reluctant Rebel

Jonathan Swift's world-famous works - from Gulliver's Travels to A Modest Proposal - are unparalleled in their piercing critique of modern society. But Jonathan Swift was a man of great contradictions: a man who satirized the powerful but aspired to political greatness, who mocked men's vanity but held himself in high esteem, a religious moralizer famed for his malice - a man sharply aware of humanity's flaws, but no less susceptible to them. 
 
As with his massively acclaimed biography of John Donne, John Stubbs paints a vivid portrait of an extraordinary man and a turbulent period of English and Irish history.

Jonathan Swift

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John Stubbs

Praise for Jonathan Swift

Stubbs succeeds in offering something delicate, subtle and new. ... In [this] fine and sensitive book, Stubbs restores Swift's writing to its rich religious and cultural contexts without diminishing its autonomy

Stubbs is an ideal guide to the tortuous ins and outs of Swift's time, an age defined by its political and religious conflicts, and their effects on his writing.

In this superb biography, Stubbs succeeds in enabling us to understand the complexities and character of this greatest of writers

Stubbs succeeds in offering something delicate, subtle and new. ... In [this] fine and sensitive book, Stubbs restores Swift's writing to its rich religious and cultural contexts without diminishing its autonomy

Stubbs is an ideal guide to the tortuous ins and outs of Swift's time, an age defined by its political and religious conflicts, and their effects on his writing.

In this superb biography, Stubbs succeeds in enabling us to understand the complexities and character of this greatest of writers

Stubbs succeeds in offering something delicate, subtle and new. ... In [this] fine and sensitive book, Stubbs restores Swift's writing to its rich religious and cultural contexts without diminishing its autonomy

Stubbs is an ideal guide to the tortuous ins and outs of Swift's time, an age defined by its political and religious conflicts, and their effects on his writing.

In this superb biography, Stubbs succeeds in enabling us to understand the complexities and character of this greatest of writers

Books by John Stubbs

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