Playwright, critic, poet, polemicist and translator, John Dryden made a vast contribution to the history of English letters, especially in the field of criticism. Persistently engaged with the turbulent political and religious issues of his day; he has come to be regarded as the embodiment of the Augustan Age. He perfected the heroic couplet, a metre that dominated English poetry for the next century.

Dryden's verse is lucid, precise, public and cultured. His Annus Mirabilis, a near-perfect 'occasional' poem in quatrains, reviews the extraordinary events of 1666 - the Great Fire of London and the Anglo-Dutch War. Made Poet Laureate in 1668, Dryden ridiculed the Duke of Monmouth's claims to the throne in his great satire Absalom and Achitophel. Once a defender of Anglicanism, he converted to Catholicism following James II's accession. He subsequently lost his positions at court and turned to translation to avoid political controversy, although subtle allusions to his Jacobite sympathies find their way into interpretations of Homer, Lucretius, Persius, Jurneval and his still revered versions of Virgil and Georgics.