SOURCE: Pebworth, Ted-Larry, and Claude J. Summers. Introduction to The Poems of Owen Felltham, 1604?-1668, edited by Ted-Larry Pebworth and Claude J. Summers, pp. iv-x. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1973.

In the following excerpt, Pebworth and Summers acknowledge that while Felltham's poetry was not the greatest of his age, the author of the Lusoria should be commended for the work's range, subtlety, and lyric beauty.

Owen Felltham (or Feltham), recognized by Anthony à Wood as one of the poets who were in the 1630's “the chiefest of the nation,”¹ is today known almost exclusively as the author of Resolves: Divine, Morall, Politicall, a collection of prose pieces issued originally in 1623 and extensively enlarged and revised during the following 38 years. Only one of Felltham's poems is frequently anthologized (L-32), and his verse has been virtually ignored by modern critics.² The neglect into which Felltham's poetry has fallen is...