This 2003 book is a full-scale history of early modern English literature, offering perspectives on English literature produced in Britain between the Reformation and the Restoration. While providing the general coverage and specific information expected of a major history, its twenty-six chapters address recent methodological and interpretive developments in English literary studies. The book has five sections: 'Modes and Means of Literary Production, Circulation, and Reception', 'The Tudor Era from the Reformation to Elizabeth I', 'The Era of Elizabeth and James VI', 'The Earlier Stuart Era', and 'The Civil War and Commonwealth Era'. While England is the principal focus, literary production in Scotland, Ireland and Wales is treated, as are other subjects less frequently examined in previous histories, including women's writings and the literature of the English Reformation and Revolution. This history is an essential resource for specialists and students.

'This bold and ground-breaking book offers a remarkable range of new ways of understanding early modern literature in its historical contexts.'

David Norbrook - University of Oxford

'… this book is a prodigious achievement. Meticulously edited and beautifully produced, with a multifaceted chronology as an appendix, its essays are for the most part marvels of compressed and incisive critical judgment. The expert contributors combine breadth of coverage and depth of reflection with tremendous assurance.'

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

'Astonishingly comprehensive and coherently unified … This extraordinarily useful reference work [is] at once authoritative, pioneering and inclusive …'.

Source: Renaissance Quarterly

'This book is a major accomplishment, and will alter the very landscape for which it provides such an effective map.'

Source: Studies in English Literature

' …a monument and record of a generation that has made large advances in knowledge and understanding of its period'.

Source: The Review of English Studies