This collection of essays by scholars from Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Taiwan covers a wide range of topics about Ralegh's diversified career and achievements. Some of the essays shed light on less familiar facets such as Ralegh as a father and as he is represented in paintings, statues, and in movies; others re-examine him as poet, historian, as a controversial figure in Ireland during Elizabeth's reign, and look at his complex relationship with and patronage of Edmund Spenser. A recurrent topic is the Hatfield Manuscript in Ralegh's handwriting, which contains his long, unfinished poem 'The Ocean to Cynthia', usually considered a lament about his rejection by Queen Elizabeth after she learned of his secret marriage to one of her ladies-in-waiting.
The book is appropriate for students of Elizabethan-Jacobean history and literature.
Among the contributors are well-known scholars of Ralegh and his era, including James Nohrenberg, Anna Beer, Thomas Herron, Alden Vaughan and Andrew Hiscock.

Christopher M. Armitage is Professor of Distinguished Teaching in the Department of English and Comparative Literature in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Introduction: Of letters and the man: Sir Walter Ralegh - Christopher M. Armitage, Thomas Herron and Julian Lethbridge
1. Ralegh in ruins, Ralegh on the rocks: Sir Wa'ter's two books of mutabilitie and their subject's allegorical presence in select Spenserean narratives and complaints - James Nohrnberg
2. Spenser and Ralegh: friendship and literary patronage - Wayne Erickson
3. Love's 'emperye': Ralegh's 'Ocean to Scinthia', Spenser's 'Colin Clouts Come Home Againe' and The Faerie Queene IV.vii in colonial context - Thomas Herron
4. 'Bellphebes course is now observde no more': Ralegh, Spenser and the literary politics of Cynthia holograph - Anna Beer
5. Replying to Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply": allusion, anti-pastoral, and four centuries of pastoral invitations - Hannibal Hamlin
6. "Moving on the Waters": metaphor and mental space in Ralegh's History of the World - Michael Booth
7. Water Ralegh's liquid narrative: The Discoverie of Guiana - Lowell Duckert
8. Ralegh, Harriot, and Anglo-American ethnography - Alden T. Vaughan
9. 'most fond and fruitlesse warre': Ralegh and the call to arms - Andrew Hiscock
10. Ralegh's "As You Came from the Holy Land" and the rival virgin queens of late sixteenth-century England - Gary Waller
11. Patrilineal Ralegh - Judith Owens
12. Ralegh's image in art - Dr. Vivienne Westbrook
13. Where's Walter? The screen incarnations of Sir Walter Ralegh - Susan Anderson
Sir Walter Ralegh bibliography (1986-2010) - Christopher M. Armitage
Index