Constructing Cromwell

This study examines the complex and shifting popular print images of Oliver Cromwell.

Constructing Cromwell is the first book-length study of representations of Oliver Cromwell in his own time. Laura Knoppers analyses almost 40 illustrations and draws on extensive archival research including manuscript letters, diaries, and satiric verse to shed light on the changing print images of England's only non-monarchical head of state.Constructing Cromwell traces the complex and shifting popular images of Oliver Cromwell from his first appearance as a public figure in the mid-1640s through the period of his power to his death and eventual disinterment after the restoration of the monarchy. The meaning and impact of this enigmatic figure has long been debated in the context of mid seventeenth-century crisis but contemporary representations of Cromwell have largely been neglected. Cromwellian print, Laura Knoppers argues, transformed the courtly forms of Caroline ceremony, portraiture and panegyric and in turn complicated and altered the cultural forms available to Charles II. The book draws on extensive archival research, including manuscript sources, startling print ephemera, and visual artefacts. Placing canonical authors such as Milton, Marvell, Waller and Dryden alongside such neglected writers as George Wither and Payne Fisher, Knoppers demonstrates how literary texts both respond and contribute to political and cultural change.