Despite his aristocratic standing, or perhaps even because of it, Lord Rochester, a courtier in the court of King Charles II of England, was known to be somewhat of a hell-raiser. A favorite poet of the monarch, he rebelled against the Puritan era that had gone before, and embraced the Restoration's backlash against it. Born and raised in Oxfordshire, he attended Wadham College, where he studied literature.
Believed to be the author of seventy five poems, Rochester was known best as a satirist and garnered praise from many famous fans, including contemporary Andrew Marvel, and his poems, generally about his rakish lifestyle of wine, women and song, were extremely popular. When Puritanism reared its head again in the more prurient Victorian era, his poetry was banned in England all together, but it enjoyed a resurgence in the 1920s and is frequently referenced by English author Grahame Greene.
Rochester's best known work is A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind, which calls into question the proper use of reason, and is believed to have been written in support of the philosopher Hobbes and his opinion of rationalism. As well as drawing on Hobbes, Rochester also borrows from a veritable lending library of philosophical heavyweights, including Epicurus, Montaigne, and Lucretius.
There is huge variation in style, form, content and genre within Rochester's work. His poems also had an element of reportage to them, as he wrote satirically about things that happened on a day to day basis within the court of King Charles II. However, because he did not strive to get his work published, but wrote it and produced it in the form of a manuscripts, the majority of his poems were not published until after his death. He also wanted some of his earlier work destroyed after experiencing a religious conversion; the earlier profanity of his writing offended him.
Rochester passed away at the young age of thirty three, from complications of syphilis, the likely result of the many years of wild and rakish living he had written about.
