The Plume and the Bench

In The Pen and the Workbench: François Poumerol, Royal Gunmaker and Poet, Dr. Sarah Condor-Fisher offers a richly textured study of one of early seventeenth-century France's most unusual figures: François Poumerol, master gunmaker to kings and a poet of technical precision, wit, and courtly intelligence. Blending literary scholarship, historical inquiry, and close textual analysis, this volume explores Poumerol's formative years, the structure and music of his verse, his use of rhyme and meter, and the larger cultural world in which craftsmanship and poetry were not opposing arts, but companion disciplines.

The book includes analysis of Poumerol's poetic forms, comparisons with later English verse traditions, and annotated presentations and translations of his poems, including the celebrated Quatrains au Roy. It reveals how Poumerol's writing mirrors the same ideals that governed his firearms: discipline, temper, utility, polish, and a deep distrust of empty ornament.

Written by Dr. Sarah Condor-Fisher, noted Poumerol scholar and author of the guiding volume on the Master-Gunmaker, France's Genius Gunmaker: François Poumerol, this volume deepens and extends her earlier work, offering readers a fuller portrait of the royal gunmaker as craftsman, poet, and thinker. It is an essential study for readers interested in early modern France, arms history, poetics, and the rare union of the forge and the pen.