Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets.

One of the greatest English playwrights of the seventeenth century, Ben Jonson was also a deeply influential lyric poet, whose poetry combined classical ideals with a vigorous interest in contemporary life and colloquial language. The "Complete Poems" contains all the volumes of poetry Jonson published in his lifetime - including "Epigrams", "The Forest and Underwoods" - alongside a wide variety of his other poems collected after his death. Ranging from deeply moving pieces such as "On My First Son" and the elegant love lyric "Song to Celia" to brutally satirical poems such as "On Poet-Ape" and the reflective "An Ode to Himself", it offers a powerful celebration of both one man's life, and of an age.