Thomas Carew was the son of Sir Matthew Carew, master in chancery, and his wife, Alice Ingpenny, widow of Sir John Rivers, lord mayor of London. Two years later his father complained to Sir Dudley Carleton that he was doing little at the law.
Thomas Carew was thirteen years old in June 1608, when he matriculated at Merton College, Oxford
Carew has long been recognized as a notable figure in English literary history. His earliest critics chiefly other poets evidently knew his work from the many manuscripts that circulated. Among many others, two of the most celebrated writers of the age, Sir John Suckling and William Davenant, paid tribute to Carew, playfully admiring his poetic craftsmanship. Carew's reputation, however, experienced a slow but steady decline during the second half of the seventeenth century.
Despite some interest in Carew in subsequent years, not until the twentieth century did critics offer a reexamination of Carew's place in English literary history. F. R. Leavis wrote in 1936: “Carew, it seems to me, has claims to more distinction than he is commonly accorded; more than he is accorded by the bracket that, in common acceptance, links him with Lovelace and Suckling.” More recently, Carew's place among the Cavalier Poets has been examined, as have his poetic affinities with Ben Jonson and John Donne; “A Rapture” has been scrutinized as both biography and fantasy; the funerary poetry has been studied as a subgenre; evidence of Carew's views concerning political hierarchy has been found in his occasional verse; and love and courtship have been probed as themes in the “Celia” poems. By the end of the twentieth century, Carew has been recognized as an important poet representative of his time and a master lyricist.
Thomas Carew is best known for his courtly, amorous lyrics, such as"Ask me no more where Jove bestows "and" He that loves a rosy cheek, "but of equal importance are his "Elegy on the Death of Dr. Donne, " and the highly erotic poem, "A Rapture.
The longest and best of Carew's poems, " A Rapture, " would be more widely appreciated if the rich flow of its imagination were restrained by greater reticence of taste. The best edition of Carew's Poems is that prepared by Arthur Vincent in 1899.
