The sultry and stormy Earl of Rochester

In 17th century England, the poems of the Earl of Rochester under Charles II were considered quite lascivious. Today, a new book on the slightly pervy poet, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: The Poems and "Lucina's Rape," edited by Keith Walker and Nicholas Fisher, synthesizes new sources with old and revises information from past biographies.  Conclusion: the Earl seems a little sleazy, no matter what version of history you prefer.

From the Sunday Times:

Members of Rochester’s immediate coterie passed copies to their friends and relatives; copies of those copies then spread through the communities around Whitehall; the Inns of Court, where bright young things pretended to study law; and the coffee houses and theatres of the booming new “town” in the West End. From there, copies found their way out to the universities at Oxford and Cambridge, and finally, enclosed in the newsletters for which country-dwellers were growing ever more avid in Rochester’s lifetime, the poem made it to more far-flung rural localities. At every stage on its journey, the text mutated: lines fell away and substitutes accrued, in-jokes and topical allusions became garbled, obscenities were compounded or cleaned up. Today, several widely differing versions survive. In one, what Nell Gwyn “employs” to rouse the reluctant royal member are her “hands, fingers, mouth and thighs”, in another, her “Mouth, Arms, feet and thighs”, in another, her “Hands, Armes, Fingers, Mouth, and Thighs”, and in another, her “Hands, Armes, fingers, leggs, mouth, Cunt and thighs”.