Richard Lovelace was a fighter and a writer. In the Civil War, he fought for the King. In fact, he was a cavalier poet of the 17th century. He took to writing while he was a student at Oxford. When he was only nineteen, his verse appeared in a volume of elegies dedicated to Princess Katherine. Lovelace wrote more than 200 poems.
He was imprisoned for his controversial political stands. From there he wrote the famous poem ‘To Althea from Prison’ in 1642. ‘To Lucasta: Going to the Warres’, is one of his other famous poems. ‘The Rose’ and ‘The Scrutiny’ were also considered as his masterpieces.
Lovelace was fascinated by animals, and he wrote ‘The Ant’, ‘The Grassehopper’ and ‘Spyder’. Lovelace’s connections with powerful personalities, and the politics of the time, influenced his writing. But the poet died in poverty in 1657.
Posthumously published ‘Lucasta, Postume Poems’, was graver, compared to the works that were published in his lifetime.
