This Concise Companion launches students into the study of English Renaissance literature by way of the key contexts that informed it.

The contributors, who are all highly regarded scholars and teachers in the field, place the literature of the period within a set of relevant historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, including: economics; religion; empire and exploration; education, humanism and rhetoric; censorship and patronage; royal marriage and succession; treason and rebellion; "others" in England; private lives; cosmology and the body; and life-writing. Their contributions incorporate recent developments in the field, as well as work soon to be published.

The volume as a whole makes the period accessible and enticing to students, and provides innovative syntheses that will be of interest to scholars.

Donna B. Hamilton is Professor of English at the University of Maryland. Her previous publications include Virgil and 'The Tempest' The Politics of Imitation (1990), Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (1992), Religion, Literature and Politics in Post-Reformation England (co-edited with Richard Strier, 1996), Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633 (2005), and an edition of Middleton's The Puritan (2005).