George Palmer Garrett, Jr., is known principally as a novelist and poet, but he also achieved recognition as playwright, screenwriter, reviewer, and literary critic. He was educated at Sewanee Military Academy and the Hill School. He entered Princeton University in 1947, receiving B.A. and M.A. degrees, and in 1985 he received his Ph.D. degree from Princeton. Garrett has had a distinguished career as teacher and scholar at Wesleyan University, Hollins College, the University of South Carolina, Princeton University, and the University of Virginia.

Garrett is best known for the historical novels Death of the Fox, which tells of the last days of Sir Walter Raleigh; The Succession, which chronicles the lives and times of Elizabeth I and her successor, James I; and Entered from the Sun, in which two bit players on the political scene—one a soldier, the other an actor—attempt to unravel the complicated death of Christopher Marlowe. Garrett’s knowledge of the Elizabethan period is encyclopedic, and his special interest is in the psychology and politics of the Elizabethans. The trilogy delves into the complex machinations of political power and influence in Elizabethan England as these affect both the wealthy and powerful and the common people. The result is a political, social, and psychological profile of one of the most glorious and violent ages of Western civilization.

In his other novels and in his short stories Garrett uses contemporary American life as his subject. His early fiction is realistic and traditional, while his later fiction tends toward the experimental, often relying on surreal characters and episodes, as in his novel Poison Pen. At the center of all his fiction, both early and later, is a gentle war between Garrett’s implacable Episcopalianism and his puckish comic sense. Garrett has also compiled volumes of critical essays that reflect both wide reading and levelheaded judgment, edited collections of stories, and issued collections of his vintage fiction. (The Old Army Game collects his best writing about the military, including his novel Which Ones Are the Enemy?)

Garrett’s poetry falls into two broad categories: personal lyric poems and topical, playful, satiric poems. Many of Garrett’s lyric poems deal with the themes of childhood, growing up, and aging. These poems are invariably terse and insightful, frequently using stories from the Bible as sources. They tell of the pains and joys of the human cycles of birth, growth, and death. Garrett’s satiric poems gain inspiration from the satires and conceits of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans. As these poets saw in their ages, Garrett sees in postwar America a way of life in need of exploration and definition. His satiric poetry often has a sharp edge, but it is neither bitter nor pessimistic.

Although the major concerns of Garrett’s poetry were constant, he experimented with poetic forms and themes. The language of his poetry was increasingly colloquial, and his subject matter ranged from the classical to the topical. The first thing that many readers notice about his poetry is its clever and incisive treatment of contemporary events and people. His poems about actors Ann-Margret and Jack Nicholson and Cosmopolitan magazine are attractive because of their subjects and their playful insights, but balanced against these transitory treatments is a deep and complicated understanding of the human condition.