Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick 1868-1938, American novelist, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1890. He was professor of English at the Univ. of Chicago from 1893 to 1923. Herrick wrote realistic social novels about the conflict between professional and personal values in American capitalistic society. His works include The Common Lot (1904), The Memoirs of an American Citizen (1905), The Master of the Inn (1908), Together (1908), Clark's Field (1914), Waste (1924), Chimes (1926), and The End of Desire (1932).

Herrick, Robert (1591–1674). Poet. Son of a Cheapside goldsmith, initially apprenticed to the trade but graduating at Cambridge (1617), Herrick was ordained in 1623. He returned to London and, in contact with other writers (especially Ben Jonson), musicians, and court wits, established himself as a poet. After accompanying the duke of Buckingham to La Rochelle (1627), he was admitted to the living of Dean Prior (Devon), where he spent most of the rest of his life. As an Anglican with strong royalist sympathies, he was ejected from the living in 1647 (retiring happily to Westminster) but was restored in 1662. Herrick's poetry was widely appreciated, appeared in miscellanies, and was set to music. From epigrams to epithalamions, though influenced by English folklore and covering a wide range of subjects, it was carefully polished yet retained much charm. A collected edition of his poems was published as Hesperides (1648).

A. S. Hargreaves