author
Elkanah Settle
1648–1724
A once-celebrated Restoration playwright and poet, he rose fast in London with flashy stage successes and a very public rivalry with John Dryden. His career later took a humbler turn, but his life still offers a vivid glimpse of the literary world of late 17th-century England.
2 Audiobooks
Anti-Achitophel (1682) Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden
by Samuel Pordage, Elkanah Settle
The Notorious Impostor (1692); Diego Redivivus (1692)
by Elkanah Settle
About the author
Born in Dunstable in 1648, Elkanah Settle studied at Trinity College, Oxford, but left without taking a degree and made his way to London. His first tragedy, Cambyses, King of Persia, was staged in 1667, and he quickly became known as a writer for the Restoration stage.
Settle enjoyed a burst of fame in the 1670s. He was praised by some contemporaries and became especially well known for his literary quarrel with John Dryden, who attacked him in print after Settle's early success. Settle wrote both plays and poems, and his work reflects the political and theatrical energy of his time.
His later years were far less glamorous. After political shifts and changing tastes hurt his prospects, he took on more practical writing jobs and is remembered as having ended his career in modest circumstances. He died in 1724, leaving behind a story of ambition, popularity, controversy, and decline in the competitive world of Restoration letters.