Nicholas Hookes (1632–1712) was an English poet, best known for Amanda, a sacrifice to an unknown goddesse.[1]
Hookes was born in London and was educated at Westminster School under Richard Busby. He gained a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1649, and graduated B.A. there in 1653. His tutor was Alexander Akehurst.[2] Akehurst was expelled from Trinity the following year, for "blasphemous statements", and accused by his student Oliver Heywood of being a Quaker. Hookes wrote of him that he concealed his head "among the clouds of alchemists".[3]
Hookes died on 7 November 1712; and was buried in St Mary-at-Lambeth.[1] A monumental inscription there remembered him as loyal to the Stuarts.[2]
The Amanda verses published by Hookes in 1653, his year of graduation, were generally in the Cavalier poet amatory style, conventional from a literary point of view but "overtly royalist" in terms of politics under the Commonwealth of England. The book was dedicated to Edward Montagu, a Westminster and Cambridge contemporary and son of Edward Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Boughton.[2]
The same year Hookes published also Miscellanea poetica, mostly Latin verse in the elegy genre: this work sought patronage.[2]