“Here is a biography befitting its subject: elegant, compact, and witty. Nobody else has von Maltzahn’s command of the Marvell archives. And now he deftly guides us into the world of the poet and polemicist, and into a remarkable mind at once gloomy and humane, taciturn and possessed of peerless verbal acumen.”

Feisal G. Mohamed, professor of English, Yale University, and author of "Sovereignty"

“von Maltzahn’s book is that rare accomplishment, an authoritative combination of literary and biographical insight. Career-long scholarship and reflection, lightly worn and crisply deployed, take us inside the imaginative journey of Marvell’s poems and prose while placing them in the cultural, political and religious contexts of his troubled times. It is a richly productive approach which yields so many fresh perceptions as to give us the sense of meeting Marvell anew.”

Blair Worden, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford