The Boston Globe, December 23rd, 1987
JOHN DRYDEN AND HIS WORLD, by James Anderson Winn. Yale University Press. 650 pp. $29.95. Illustrated. James Winn's first - ate biography of John Dryden reminds us that in 17th- century England poetry was a public act. When poets took off the gloves -- as Dryden does in "Mac Flecknoe," the hilarious mock-heroic epic that trashes Thomas Shadwell for his corpulence, dullness and opium addiction -- slander reigned supreme. The politics of publication involved personal survival, the laureate was a focus of envy, and rivals and enemies lampooned every literary lion. Thus Dryden from his own era onw...
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