Stuart Succession Literature ― Moments and Transformations

Moments of royal succession, which punctuate the Stuart era (1603-1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions: to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefitting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

Paulina Kewes, Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford and Fellow of Jesus College Oxford,Andrew McRae, Professor of Renaissance Studies, University of Exeter

Paulina Kewes is Professor of English Literature and Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. She is the author of This Great Matter of Succession: England's Debate, 1553-1603 (forthcoming from Oxford University Press) and Authorship and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660-1710 (1998), and editor or co-editor of: Plagiarism in Early Modern England (2003), The Uses of History in Early Modern England (2006), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles (2013) and Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England (2014). She is working on a study of monarchy and counsel on the early Elizabethan stage.


Andrew McRae is Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Exeter. His works on the literature and cultural history of early modern England include: God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500-1660 (1996), Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State (2004), and Literature and Domestic Travel in Early Modern England (2009). He is co-editor of Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry from Manuscript Sources and is collaborating on a new scholarly edition of Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion. Professor McRae is Dean of the Exeter Doctoral College.