Milton’s Sonnet XIV and the poetry of George Thomason

It has long been recognised that Thomason was well connected, and that his friends included men like John Milton. This essay uses the sonnet that Milton wrote in honour of Thomason’s wife as the springboard for a discussion of a neglected aspect of the Thomason tracts: its poetry. It thus reflects on the fact that Thomason was not just interested in news and polemical pamphleteering, but also preserved a vital body of contemporary verse, in both print and manuscript. This dimension of his collecting highlights that topicality, rather than content, genre or format was central to the process by which he sought to document the tumultuous times through which he lived, and this chapter demonstrates the vital importance that Thomason’s collection has for comprehending English literature during the mid-seventeenth century.