Ebenezer Cooke, the protagonist of The Sot-Weed Factor, is the son of a Maryland sot-weed factor or tobacco planter, although he is raised as an orphan in England together with his twin sister, Anna. After an education at home supervised by the family's tutor, Henry Burlingame, Ebenezer goes off to Cambridge where his wild imagination and inability to take the world seriously make him an indifferent student at best. Ebenezer's disposition here recalls the problems of Todd Andrews in The Floating Opera (1956) and is the source of many of his future difficulties. After Cambridge, Ebenezer embarks on a career as a poet in London. Hopelessly naive, he takes his own innocence and virginity as a sign of his calling, and he obtains a commission as the poet laureate of Maryland before he is sent to the colony to oversee his father's estate. Cooke's career as a poet is...