“Readers who are tempted into the book by its focus on the life will finish with something far richer than more conventional biographies offer. . . . It is hard to imagine a better book for anyone, general reader or seventeenth-century aficionado or teacher or student, newly embarking on Herbert.”
— Guardian
“Powerfully absorbing.”
— Financial Times
“Drury manages wonderfully in bringing text and context profitably together. His book is especially valuable, and enjoyable, in its deft and insightful expositions of Herbert’s formal and stylistic brilliance.”
— Times Higher Education
“Being an English country minister has inspired many writers, none of them more lapidary, precise, witty and surprising than George Herbert, the frail intellectual who preached to the parish of Bemerton from 1630 to 1633. An account of an Anglican priest and his poetry that will probably never be bettered.”
— Economist Book of the Year
"A welcome, rich, and illuminating biography."
— Shelf Awareness
"Drury’s book is a careful blend of life, poetry, history, and textual analysis. For the first time, Herbert’s poems are embedded in his life. . . . Drury excels at demonstrating that Herbert’s poetry manages to be beguilingly simple and strikingly complex. . . . Drury’s scholarly and immensely readable biography . . . presents the most fully realized Herbert to date."
— New Criterion
"Every Christian should be familiar with the poems of George Herbert. . . .The book’s strength lies in Drury’s ability to explain Herbert’s theology and draw out the Christian meaning in the poems. . . . The book is academic enough for scholars, but easily accessible to the lay reader with a bit of patience."
— World
“Offers a deeply sympathetic, sensitive introduction to Herbert.”
— Studies in English Literature 1500–1900
“Drury is a scholar of the old-fashioned kind, making extensive use of original sources. He is also masterful in recreating historical context.... He brilliantly analyses dozens of Herbert poems, without boring the novice with too much technical jargon, and yet with enough finesse to keep the diligent student interested.”
— Gregory E. Reynolds, Ordained Servant Online