Works
His extant writings, noted by Thomas Park in Brydges's British Bibliographer, number over a hundred. Wither wrote, generally, in a pure English idiom, and preferred the reputation of rusticity. According to the Dunciad "Withers, Ward, and Gildon rest" together "Safe, where no Critics damn, no duns molest".
After a period of neglect, George Ellis anthologised Wither in Specimens of the Early English Poets (1790). Samuel Egerton Brydges published The Shepherds Hunting (1814), Fidelia (1815) and Fair Virtue (1818), and a selection appeared in Ezekiel Sanford's Works of the British Poets, vol. v. (1819).
Most of Wither's works were edited in twenty volumes for the Spenser Society (1871–82); a selection was included by Henry Morley in his Companion Poets (1891); Fidelia and Fair Virtue are included in Edward Arber's English Garner (vol. iv, 1882; vol. vi, 1883), and The Poetry of George Wither was edited by Frank Sidgwick in 1902.
A selection of Wither's hymns was published in 2011 by The Phoenix Press in The Gibbons Songbook. Whilst primarily a realisation of the tunes Orlando Gibbons wrote for The Hymns and Songs of the Church a selection of verses from the hymns is paired with the original verses from the King James Bible which inspired Wither to create the hymns.
Read more about this topic: George Wither
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Now they express
All that’s content to wear a worn-out coat,
All actions done in patient hopelessness,
All that ignores the silences of death,
Thinking no further than the hand can hold,
All that grows old,
Yet works on uselessly with shortened breath.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)