Samuel Sheppard
(1624-1655)
WORKS
PROFILE
COMMENTARY BIOGRAPHIES REFERENCE
AUTHOR AS CRITIC 
The son of Dr. Harman Sheppard, a clergyman, Samuel Sheppard was born in 1624; little is known of him other than that he began publishing poetry as a young man, and hoped to make his reputation with his Fairy King, written while the poet was in his twenties. An admirer of Francis Quarles, Sheppard contributed to Mercurius Pragmaticus (1647-50) before his death at the age of 30. After supporting Cromwell, Sheppard changed sides and risked his life for the king, was imprisoned, and abandoned public life to write his Fairy King. He was obviously not the friend of Ben Jonson, as reported in the DNB. Sheppard published under the pseudonym, "Raphael Desmus."
TEXT RECORDS:
1646The Sixth Sestyad.
1651A Dialogue maintained by Five, viz. the Poet, Clio, Povertie, Ignorance, Mammon.
1651On Mr. Spencers inimitable Poem, the Faerie Queene.
1651 ca.The Faerie King fashioning Love and Honour.
1651The First Pastoral.
1651The Second Pastoral.
1651The Third Pastoral.
1651To Clio, having begun my Faerie King.
1651To his Muse in reference to his Faerie King.
1651To the illustrious Cardinall Mazerine, his Victory lately obtained over the Spanish Army under the Archduke Leopold.
1651[The Fourth Pastoral.]
PUBLICATIONS:
Animadversions upon John Lilburnes two last books. 1646.
The times displayed in six sestyads. 1646.
The false alarum, or an answer to a libell lately published. 1646.
The famers fam'd, or an answer to two seditious pamplets. 1646.
God and Mammon: or no fellowship betwixt light and darkness. 1646.
[An hymn to God] In the year of jubile. 1646.
The yeare of jubile; or England's releasment. 1646.
The committee-man curried. A comedy. 1647.
The loves of Amandus and Sophronia, historically narrated. 1650.
The joviall crew, or the devill turn'd ranter. 1651.
Epigrams ... also the Socratick session, or the arraignment and conviction of Julius Scaliger. 1651.
Epigrams theological, philosophical and romantick. 1651.
Good-ale monopolized, and the tapsters persecuted [by Sheppard?]. 1654.
Fortune's tennis-ball: or the most excellent history of Dorastus and Fawnia rendered into verse [fr. Greene, Pandosto]. 1688.
The faerie king, ed. P. J. Klemp. 1984.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Anglican
education not known
poet
essayist
dramatist
Samuel Holland
Francis Quarles
William Winstanley
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL.
[Portrait in Epigrams (1651)]; Gerard Langbaine, Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691); Charles Gildon, Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets (1699); Giles Jacob, Poetical Register (1719); David Erskine Baker, Companion to the Play-House (1764); Biographia Dramatica (1782; 1812); George Ellis, Specimens of Early English Poetry (1790; 1801); Thomas Park, "Sheppard's Epigrams" Censura Literaria 5 (1807) 337-47, 6 (1808) 8-9; Joseph Haslewood, British Bibliographer 1 (1810) 528-37; Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); John Mitford, "The Times Displayed" Gentleman's Magazine NS 27 (1847) 268-72; Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Thomas Corser, Collectanea Anglo-Poetica 10 (1880) 232-37; H. E. Rollins, "Sheppard and his Praise of Poets" Studies in Philology 24 (1927) 509-55; Roberta Florence Brinkley, Arthurian Legend in the Seventeenth Century (1932) 111-13; Bush, OHEL (1945); Cummings, Spenser: The Critical Heritage (1971); Paul J. Klemp, ed., The Faerie King (1984); Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Database (1995).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for Samuel Sheppard:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for Samuel Sheppard:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)