This volume offers a description of early modern habits of writing and reading, of publication and stage performance, and of political and religious writing.

• An introduction to early modern English literature for students and general readers.
  
• Considers the ways in which early modern writers construct the past, recover and adapt classical genres, write about people and places, and tackle religious and secular controversies.
  
• Illustrated with a profusion of excerpts from early modern texts.
  
• Writers represented include More, Erasmus, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton, as well as less well known authors.