A collection of essays examining circumstances and conditions of poets' work. With Dryden as a central figure, the author describes the perplexities and felicity of genius in writers such as Donne, Hobbes and Marvell.

Is poetry the distinctively free and self-contained form of language it has so often been called? Focusing on Dryden, but also looking at writers such as Donne, Hobbes, Marvell, and Pound, Geoffrey Hill examines the real conditions of poets' work, grounded as it is in the mundane drudgery and insecurity of historical existence. With humour and rigour, The Enemy's Country enacts the struggle of poetry for truth and meaning amid `the common practice of men'.

'... his unravelling of friendly generosity and proud reservation in the text and circumstances of Dryden's 'To the Memory of Mr Oldham' seems set to become a classic of criticism.' Roger D. Sell. Abo Akademi University. Review of English Studies Vol XLV