Ann Baynes Coiro

Robert Herrick's Hesperides and the Epigram Book Tradition

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988

Because Robert Herrick has usually been regarded as a poet of brief, if brilliant, moments, the 1,130 poems of his Hesperides have never been treated as a coherent volume.  Professor Ann Coiro examines Herrick and Hesperides in a new context -- that of the epigram book, a genre that invited a variety of interpretations during the Renaissance.  She provides a full appreciation of the work's complex unity and illuminates the structure and function of a long-neglected genre.