Charles Goodall (poet)

Charles Goodall (1671 – 11 May 1689[1]) was an English poet.[2] A student of Eton College and then Merton College, Oxford, he wrote a number of romantic and erotic poems referring to male students at said colleges. In 1689, the year of his death, he put together a collection entitled Poems and Translations which contains 33 poems with male-male subject matter, eleven regarding women, and 13 to a mistress named 'Idera' (considered probably imaginary). A number of the homoerotic poems have been rewritten to remove the same-sex subject matter.[3]

Goodall's father—Dr. Charles Goodall—was a London physician.[1][4]

  1. ^ a b Anthony Wood (1790). Appendix to the History and Antiquities of the Colleges and Halls in the University of Oxford: Containing Fasti Oxonienses. Or a Commentary on the Supreme Magistrates of the University ... Clarendon Press. p. 214.
  2. ^ George Watson; Ian R. Willison (1971). New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Cambridge University Press. p. 1968. ISBN 978-0-521-07934-1.
  3. ^ Marie H. Loughlin, ed. (23 July 2013). Same Sex Desire in Early Modern England, 1550–1735: An Anthology of Literary Texts and Contexts. Manchester University Press. p. 385. ISBN 9780719082085.
  4. ^ Kenneth Dewhurst (1 January 1966). Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689): His Life and Original Writings. University of California Press. p. 39. GGKEY:93CBNAW75NF.