Urban Marvell

After his return to London from his Continental travels in the 1640s, Andrew Marvell comported himself as an avowed Londoner, deeply focused on politics, diplomacy, and the hurly-burly of everyday life in the capital. Indeed, life in the capital powerfully shaped his literary expression. The booming coffee-house culture informed his approach to raillery and animadversion. Popular Restoration plays inspired his controversialist prose. And specific sensational events, news items, or public works occasioned much of his satirical verse. Through layers of allusion and resonance arising from these various contexts, Marvell’s later writings provide an impressionistic portrayal of urban London, the vibrancy of which animated Marvell’s imagination during the last eighteen years of his life.