author
Jeremy Collier
1650–1726
A fierce critic of Restoration comedy, he became famous for attacking the stage’s moral tone and helped spark one of the liveliest literary debates of his age. He was also a clergyman and leading Nonjuror whose religious convictions shaped his public life as much as his writing.
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About the author
Born in Stow cum Quy, Cambridgeshire, on September 23, 1650, Jeremy Collier was educated at Ipswich School and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He became an Anglican clergyman, but after the Glorious Revolution he refused to swear allegiance to William III and Mary II, joining the Nonjurors, a group of clergy who remained loyal to the old oath.
Collier is best remembered today for A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), a forceful attack on the wit, sexual frankness, and irreverence of Restoration drama. The book provoked major replies from leading playwrights, including John Dryden, and made Collier a central figure in a wide public argument about literature, manners, and morality.
Beyond that controversy, he was known as a theologian, preacher, and later a bishop among the Nonjurors. He died in London on April 26, 1726, leaving a reputation as a combative, principled writer whose criticism had a lasting effect on how English theatre was discussed.