the autobiography of John Dryden

1. History of English literature
John Dryden
M. Fauzan
121073030

2. John Dryden
Born in Northamptonshire, England,
on August 9, 1631, John Dryden
came from a landowning family
with connections to Parliament
and the Church of England. He
studied as a King’s Scholar at the
prestigious Westminster School of
London, where he later sent two of
his own children. There, Dryden
was trained in the art of rhetorical
argument, which remained a
strong influence on the poet’s
writing and critical thought
throughout his life.

3. Early life
Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near
Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal
grandfather was Rector of All Saints. He was the eldest
of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife
Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus
Dryden, 1st Baronet (1553–1632) and wife Frances
Wilkes, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the
Puritan cause and Parliament. He was a second cousin
once removed of Jonathan Swift. As a boy Dryden lived
in the nearby village of Titchmarsh, Northamptonshire
where it is likely that he received his first education.

4. Family
On 1 December 1663 Dryden married Lady Elizabeth
Howard (died 1714). The marriage was at St. Swithin's,
London, and the consent of the parents is noted on the
license, though Lady Elizabeth was then about twenty-
five. She was the object of some scandals, well or ill
founded; it was said that Dryden had been bullied into
the marriage by her brothers. A small estate in Wiltshire
was settled upon them by her father. The lady's intellect
and temper were apparently not good; her husband was
treated as an inferior by her social equals. Both Dryden
and his wife were warmly attached to their children. They
had three sons Charles, (1666–1704), John (1668–1701)
and Erasmus Henry (1669–1710). Lady Elizabeth
Dryden survived her husband, but became insane soon
after his death.

5. Alma mater
In 1644 he was sent to Westminster School as a
King's Scholar where his headmaster was Dr
Richard Busby, a charismatic teacher and
severe disciplinarian. Having recently been re-
founded by Elizabeth I, Westminster during this
period embraced a very different religious and
political spirit encouraging royalism and high
Anglicanism. Whatever Dryden's response to
this was, he clearly respected the Headmaster
and would later send two of his sons to school at
Westminster. In the late twentieth century a
house at Westminster was founded in his name.

6. In 1650 Dryden went up to Trinity College, Cambridge.
Here he would have experienced a return to the religious
and political ethos of his childhood: the Master of Trinity
was a Puritan preacher by the name of Thomas Hill who
had been a rector in Dryden's home village. Though
there is little specific information on Dryden’s
undergraduate years, he would most certainly have
followed the standard curriculum of classics, rhetoric,
and mathematics. In 1654 he obtained his BA,
graduating top of the list for Trinity that year. In June of
the same year Dryden’s father died, leaving him some
land which generated a little income, but not enough to
live on.

7. works
• After graduation, Dryden found work with
Oliver Cromwell’s Secretary of State, John
Thurloe, marking a radical shift in the
poet’s political views. Alongside Puritan
poets John Milton and Andrew Marvell,
Dryden was present at Cromwell’s funeral
in 1658, and one year later published his
first important poem, Heroic Stanzas,
eulogizing the leader.

8. Dryden died on May 1, 1700, and was
initially buried in St. Anne’s Cemetery. In
1710, he was moved to the Poets’ Corner
of Westminster Abbey, where a memorial
has been erected.

9. THANKS

10. THANKS