George Herbert: Complete Works Volume I: English Prose

by Whalen, Robert; Hodgkins, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780192855053
• ISBN10: 0192855050
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-08-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Famed for his heart-searching devotional lyric poetry, George Herbert (1593-1633) also authored some of the finest and most influential English prose of his era: The Countrey Parson, his oft-cited pastoral manual, still valued for its spiritual insight, shrewd advice, and a style at once lively and refined, engaging and serious; A Treatise of Temperance and Sobrietie, his translation of Luigi Cornaro's jovial Italian tract on dietary health; Notes on Valdesso, his judicious and appreciative commentary (and sole theological work) on the Considerations of controversial Spanish humanist Juan de Valdés; his collections of Outlandish Proverbs and Jacula Prudentum, pervasively popular for centuries and shot through with familiar wisdom and wit; his Letters, providing the most intimate records of and reflections on his brief life; and his Will, dictated and witnessed as he lay dying of tuberculosis in his Bemerton rectory at the age of 39. Each of these works, frequently cited as contexts for his renowned English poetry, appears here for close study in its own right.

Volume I: English Prose offers textual and critical introductions and annotations, a concise title essay and overview of prominent criticism for each chapter or section in subdivided works, and, above all, rigorous scholarly texts based on the earliest and best manuscript and print sources--some newly discovered or confirmed. Serious literary art by any measure, Herbert's English prose has emerged in recent years from the shadow of his rightly famous poetry. Such attention stands here fully justified: an edition whose accessible texts, combined with extensive and meticulous critical apparatus, will equip scholars for new discoveries and accelerate the already global interest in Herbert's work.

Author Biography

Robert Whalen, Professor of Renaissance Literature, Northern Michigan University,Christopher Hodgkins, Professor of Renaissance Literature and Atlantic World Studies, University of North Carolina-Greensboro

Robert Whalen is Professor of Renaissance Literature at Northern Michigan University. He is the author of a book and articles on George Herbert and John Donne, as well as articles on digital editing and textual scholarship, the latter all pertaining to his career-long engagement with the Herbert corpus. He is co-editor, with Christopher Hodgkins, of The Digital Temple as well as the forthcoming The Temple and The Country Parson for Oxford World's Classics. He has been a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and, with Hodgkins, is a three-time recipient of the NEH Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant.


Christopher Hodgkins is Professor of Renaissance Literature and Atlantic World Studies at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. In addition to the publications and grants shared with Robert Whalen, he is author or editor of seven books treating topics including Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Milton, the imperial imagination, and the Bible. He serves on the consortium board of the Folger Institute in Washington, DC, and on the consortium board of the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA. He directs the international George Herbert Society and has been invited to address audiences across North America and at the Universities of Cambridge, London, Bangor, Edinburgh, Catania, Aarhus, and Paris; at Salisbury and Canterbury Cathedrals; and at the Vatican.

Table of Contents

PrefaceA Timeline of George Herbert's Life and EraSource Texts and SiglaOther Abbreviations and ReferencesTextual PolicyA Priest to the Temple, or, The Countrey Parson his Character, and Rule of Holy LifeTextual IntroductionCritical IntroductionThe Authour to the ReaderA Treatise of Temperance and SobrietieTextual IntroductionCritical IntroductionA Treatise of Temperance and SobrietieBriefe Notes Relating to the Dubious and Offensive Places in [Valdesso's] ConsiderationsTextual IntroductionCritical IntroductionA Copy of a letter written by Mr George Herbert to his friend the Translator of this BookOutlandish Proverbs and Jacula PrudentumTextual IntroductionCritical IntroductionOutlandish Proverbs and Jacula PrudentumLettersTextual IntroductionCritical IntroductionHerbert's WillTextual IntroductionCritical IntroductionHerbert's Will