The Later Renaissance in England: Nondramatic Verse and Prose, 1600-1660

The most extensive collection of its kind available! The period from the accession of James I in 1603 to the restoration of his grandson Charles II in 1660, or from the death of Spenser to Dryden's emergence as a writer, was a time when doctors wrote about religion, politicians doubled as historians, divines were men of letters, and everybody had an opinion about politics. This extensive collection of writings, painstakingly examined in their earliest printed or manuscript sources and compiled by the late Herschel Baker, provides reliable texts for a generous sampling of the nondramatic literary activity of a period rich in writers great and small. Baker fully immerses readers into a period of exciting and important literary expression, believing that representing only the giants of this momentous time--Andrewes, Donne, Taylor, Clarendon, Bacon, or Hobbes--gives a very partial view of an age conspicuous for its conflict and diversity.