Including contributions from key early modern historians, this book uses and critiques the notion of the public sphere to produce a new account of England in the post-reformation period from the 1530s to the early eighteenth century. Makes a substantive contribution to the historiography of early modern England.

List of contributorsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Rethinking the public sphere in early modern England. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus1. The pilgrimage of grace and the public sphere. Ethan Shagan2. The politics of popularity and the public sphere: the ‘monarchical republic’ of Elizabeth I defends itself. Peter Lake3. The smiling crocodile: the Earl of Essex and late-Elizabethan ‘popularity’. Paul Hammer4. The ‘public man’ in late Tudor and early Stuart England. Richard Cust5. The embarrassment of libels: perceptions and representations of verse libeling in early Stuart England. Alastair Bellany6. Marketing a massacre: Amboyna, the East India Company and the public sphere in early modern England. Anthony Milton7. Men, the ‘public’ and the ‘private' in the English revolution. Ann Hughes8. The state and civil society in early modern England: capitalism, causation and Habermas’ bourgeois public sphere. Steven Pincus9. Matthew Smith v the ‘great men’: plot-talk, the public spere and the problem of credibility in the 1690s. Rachel Weil10. How rational was the later Stuart public sphere? Mark KnightsIndex

This book uses the notion of the public sphere to produce a new view of the history of England in the post-reformation period, tracing its themes from the 1530s to the early eighteenth century. The contributors, who are all leaders in their own fields, bring a diverse range of approaches and types of material and analysis to bear on the central theme. The book aims to put the results of some of the most innovative and exciting work in the field before the reader in accessible form. Each chapter can stand on its own and represents a contribution to its own area of study and sub-period as well as to the overall argument of the book. Approaching the central questions raised by the book in different ways, and reaching differing conclusions, the essays do not follow a single line of argument, but rather show how a series of questions and issues, organized around the topos of the public sphere, can make this period look different. Politics, culture and religion all feature prominently in the resulting analysis, which should be of interest both to advanced undergraduate students of early modern English history and literature as well as more advanced researchers in those and related fields.