William Browne of Tavistock has enjoyed a modest but persistent reputation from the time his earliest poetry was made public. His best-known work has always been Britannia's Pastorals ; its first two books (1613, 1616), published when he was in his twenties, were the only parts he saw in print. In them he celebrates in a fanciful, exuberant, and somewhat desultory manner the West Country where he was raised. Another early work, also in the pastoral vein, is the substantial portion that Browne contributed to The Shepheards Pipe (1614). Book 3 of Britannia's Pastorals, written about ten years after books 1 and 2, was not published until the mid nineteenth century. Indeed, at his death almost as much of his verse was left in manuscript as in print, and much of the unpublished work, including book 3 of Britannia's Pastorals , was personal lyric rather than pastoral narrative.

It is because of Browne's early, published work that...