Dating the Poetry of Thomas Fairfax in Add. Ms 11744 (British Library)

Among the lesser-known achievements of Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612–71) is his poetical output: Lord General of the New Model Army during the English Civil Wars, Fairfax also wrote verse—largely lyric translation of biblical books but also some original compositions. Fairfax’s biblical translations include the entirety of the Song of Solomon and the book of Psalms, as well as parts of eight other biblical books. He also translated secular poems by Petrarch and Saint-Amant, and composed nearly forty original poems, with both sacred and secular subject matter. This body of work is not currently listed in the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700 (CELM), and Ian Gentles’ entry for Fairfax in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) dismisses it as having ‘no literary merit’—although it does, he writes, show ‘a sensuous appreciation of natural beauty’ and ‘provide insight into [Fairfax’s] deeply religious nature’.1