ABSTRACT
Date and publication. In 1665 D. left London to avoid the plague, perhaps soon after the theatres closed on 5 June; the vivid description of the sounds of the Battle of Lowestoft (3 June) at the opening of EDP suggests that he was still in London then (see also the ‘Verses to her Highness the Duchess’ ll. 13–20, 30–2). He retired to Charlton, Wiltshire, the seat of his father-in-law Thomas Howard, Earl of Berkshire. He stayed there until the end of 1666, composing Secret Love, AM and EDP. The poem depicts events from March 1665 to September 1666, and was probably composed in the summer and autumn of 1666; the address to Sir Robert Howard is dated 10 November 1666. On grounds of style and tone Works (i 257) suggests that the verses on the fire were an afterthought, but this is mere speculation. Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666 was licensed by L’Estrange on 22 November 1666 and published by Herringman early in 1667 (SR 21 January). New light on the exact date and circumstances of the publication is shed by a letter from Sir Allen Brodrick to the Duke of Ormonde dated 29 December 1666: ‘There is a Poem of the last Sumers Sea Fights by Mr Dreyden in the Press, which I had hoped to inclose for your Graces divertisement, the next shall certaynely bring it, for I suppose it deteyned only for the Ceremony of a New Years guift to the Prince and Generall’. On 1 January 1667 he wrote that ‘I sent your Grace Mr Drydens by the last Post’ (BodL MS Carte 35 ff. 191r and 232r; information from Nicholas von Maltzahn, privately). Pepys bought a copy on 2 February. Two alterations were made after the initial printing: in the second issue C6 was cancelled and replaced with a leaf giving a revised version of stanza 105; in the third issue C1 was also cancelled and a revised version of l. 267 substituted (this C1 cancellans exists in two settings): for the variants see the notes below. Since D. was in Wiltshire when 1667 was printed he asked Sir Robert Howard to see it through the press. Howard failed to spot a number of errors, and 1667 has a note ‘To the Readers’ (sig. a4r) in which D. says: ‘Notwithstanding the diligence which has been used in my absence, some faults have escap’d the Press: and I have so many of my own to answer for, that I am not willing to be charg’d with those of the Printer. I have onely noted the grossest of them, not such as by false stops have confounded the sense, but such as by mistaken words have corrupted it’. An errata list follows. The present text is from 1667, third issue, with readings from the errata list silently incorporated. AM was reprinted in 1668 (probably pirated) and 1688, but there is no evidence that D. oversaw these editions. 1688 makes some necessary corrections (followed here) but also adds many errors; some changes of wording could be attributable to D. (see l. 649n), but they could easily have been made in the printing house.
