RAKE ROCHESTER

Another Restoration rescue (see A Rake And His Times, Wilson, Farrar, Strauss & Young P. 146) this pursues the roistering life of John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, a royal ward, whose brilliance contrasted with his unrest and excesses. A youth of prodigal talents in wit and poetry, in charm and curiosity, he was locked in the Tower for abducting ""the great beauty and fortune of the North"" -- but he married her; he hid a- away from the surfeit of Court life in slums, as a tinker, as a doctor; he wandered from bed to bed; he drank and insulted the king; he was the basis of scandal and he fomented scandal; his penitence in his last days called for the destruction of his ""profane and lewd writings""; his death brought his writings into notorious prominence. Much ado about the bawdry of the age marks this title tattle of the titled and accents the pornographic side of an unresolved rakehell.