John Dryden

John Dryden (1631–1700) was born in Northamptonshire and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. England’s first Poet Laureate, appointed in 1668, he wrote the satires Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and Mac Flecknoe, the tragedy All for Love (1677), and criticism that shaped English literary judgment for a century. He lost the laureateship in 1689 after converting to Catholicism and declining to swear allegiance to William and Mary. His translation of the complete works of Virgil (1697) and Fables Ancient and Modern (1700), modernizing Chaucer and Boccaccio, closed his career; he died in London.