| Summary: | The Life of Abraham Cowley, published as a preface to his complete works immediately after his death, offers a new vision of the author as a biographical subject. In this short narrative, Cowley’s biographer Thomas Sprat comes to terms with the literary and creative identity of his subject, thereby illustrating the new idea of literature that has emerged in the seventeenth century. Here the prefatory biography promotes Cowley’s literary works, contrary to earlier English biographies that tried rather to minimize the importance of the author’s literary activity. Yet, whereas English life narratives increasingly tended to focus on the intimate life of the subject, Sprat’s biography shies away from personal details to focus on Cowley’s public persona instead.
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