Andrew Marvell

He died on 16 August 1678 after a fever. His sudden and unexpected death, at the age of 57, led to rumors that he had in fact been poisoned to death by the Jesuits.

Only some of his poems had been published during his lifetime. A vast majority of his works were published posthumously in 1681, three years after his death.

He was born on 31 March 1621 to Reverend Andrew Marvell, a Church of England clergyman, and his wife Anne Pease Marvell. His father was appointed as a lecturer at Holy Trinity Church when the young Andrew was three years old.

He received his primary education from the Hull Grammar School. In 1633, at the age of 12, he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge from where he eventually completed his B.A. degree in 1639.

He started writing poems in college and two of his poems, one in Latin and the other in Greek were published in an anthology of Cambridge poets.

He wanted to continue his studies and complete his master’s degree but his father’s accidental death and the outbreak of the civil war in 1642 forced him to abandon his studies.

Since not much information is available about the writer, it is speculated that he might have worked for a short while in the shipping business of his brother-in-law after leaving Cambridge.

During the 1640s he traveled extensively over Europe, in a four-year long tour of the continent. Some sources suggest that he worked as tutor during his travels in order to earn his livelihood.

By touring all over Holland, France, Italy, and Spain, he totally avoided the civil war back home in England. His extensive travels helped him add Dutch, French, Spanish, and Italian to his vocabulary.

He wrote several poems between 1645 and 1649 which express a Royalist tone, thus labeling him as a Royalist sympathizer.

He was very much attracted by the personality of Oliver Cromwell and wrote "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland" in 1650. The poem garnered a lot of attention for its skillful lyrics and also created some controversy regarding the poet’s admiration for the military general.

One of his best known works is ‘To His Coy Mistress’ which is a metaphysical poem in which the poet addresses a woman who is slow to respond to his advances and laments that he does not have enough time to admire and love her.

’Upon Appleton House’ is another one of his famous poems. Written for Thomas Fairfax, the poem describes the Nun Appleton estate while reflecting upon the political issues of the time.