Poor Robin

The earliest volume published under the pseudonym of 'Poor Robin' was an almanac calculated from the meridian of Saffron Walden, which is said to have been originally issued in 1661 or 1662.

The identity of its original author has been disputed, but is assigned as William Winstanley by Sidney Lee, in the Dictionary of National Biography, who dismisses the claim that Robert Herrick wrote it.

[3] Another volume in verse by 'Poor Robin', in which the tone of John Taylor the water-poet is closely followed, was called Poor Robin's Perambulation from Saffron Walden to London performed this Month of July 1678 (London, 1678); the doggerel poem deals largely with the alehouses on the road, and Lee assigns it to William Winstanley.

[5] Poor Robin offered deadpan prognostications of the obvious, and substituted parodic saints' days under the "Fanatic" rubric.

Other works purporting to be by 'Poor Robin' and attributed to Winstanley or his imitators are: In the 18th century editors included Thomas Peat.