This is a postprint! The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Life Writing 13.4 (Taylor & Francis, 2016): 449-64. http://www.tandfonline.com/DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2015.1073715. ‘Rais’d from a Dunghill, to a King’s Embrace’: Restoration Verse Satires on Nell Gwyn as Life-Writing Dr. Julia Novak University of Salzburg Hertha Firnberg Research Fellow (FWF) Department of English and American Studies University of Salzburg Erzabt-Klotzstraße 1 5020 Salzburg AUSTRIA Tel. +43(0)699 81761689 Email:
[email protected] This work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under Grant T 589-G23. Abstract Nell Gwyn (1650-1687), one of the very early theatre actresses on the Restoration stage and long-term mistress to King Charles II, has today become a popular cultural icon, revered for her wit and good-naturedness. The image of Gwyn that emerges from Restoration satires, by contrast, is considerably more critical of the king’s actress-mistress. It is this image, arising from satiric references to and verse lives of Nell Gwyn, which forms the focus of this paper. Creating an image – a ‘likeness’ – of the subject is often cited as one of the chief purposes of biography. From the perspective of biography studies, this paper will probe to what extent Restoration verse satire can be read as life-writing and where it can be situated in the context of other 17th-century life-writing forms. It will examine which aspects of Gwyn’s life and character the satires address and what these choices reveal about the purposes of satire as a form of biographical storytelling.