John Wilmot (1 April 1647 – 26 July 1680) was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II’s Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the “spiritual authoritarianism” of the Puritan era.[3] Rochester embodied this new era, and he became as well known for his rakish lifestyle as his poetry, although the two were often interlinked.[3] He died as a result of venereal disease at the age of just 33.
Rochester was described by his contemporary Andrew Marvell as “the best English satirist,” and he is generally considered to be the most considerable poet and the most learned among the Restoration wits.[4] His poetry was widely censored during the Victorian era, but enjoyed a revival from the 1920s onwards, with reappraisals from noted literary figures such as Graham Greene and Ezra Pound.[5] The critic Vivian de Sola Pinto linked Rochester’s libertinism to Hobbesian materialism.[5]