Francis Quarles
baptized May 8, 1592, Romford, Essex, Eng.
died Sept. 8, 1644, London
religious poet remembered for his Emblemes, the
most notable emblem book in English.
The son of a minor court official, Quarles was
educated at the University of Cambridge and at
Lincoln’s Inn, London. The wealth of Quarles’s
family at first allowed him to live a leisured
and studious life, but in the late 1620s he
served as secretary to Archbishop James Ussher
in Ireland. In 1640 Quarles became chronologer
to London, virtually abandoning poetry to employ
his pen more lucratively. He died in relative
poverty.
With Emblemes (1635) Quarles produced a new
type of emblem book (traditionally a collection
of symbolic pictures, usually accompanied by
mottoes and expositions in verse and by a prose
commentary). Each emblem consisted of a
grotesque engraving and a paraphrase of
Scripture in ornate and metaphysical language
and concluded with an epigrammatic verse.
Emblemes was so successful that Quarles produced
another emblem book, Hieroglyphikes of the Life
of Man (1638). The two were printed together in
1639, and this work became possibly the most
popular book of verse of the 17th century.
His first prose work, Enchiridion (1640), was
a highly popular book of aphorisms. In the
English Civil Wars he is said to have suffered
for his allegiance and for writing The Loyall
Convert (1644), a pamphlet defending Charles I’s
position.
