Almost 60 years ago, when our present Queen ascended the throne as Queen Elizabeth II, the hope and optimism that engendered was very quickly encapsulated, symbolised, and tagged with the phrase, the New Elizabethan Age. Without stopping to enquire whether the vision conjured up was ever translated into any sort of reality, it said much for the first Elizabethan Age when the general acceptance of the reformed religion promised stability at last, when the arts flourished, business boomed, and overseas discovery and exploration in the name of trade presaged the first British Empire. Social upheaval, waiting to explode in the next century, can now no doubt be discerned by academic historians, but at the time, after two centuries of dynastic and religious strife, the country was apparently free from the ills that had plagued all classes for so long. In retrospect, Tudor England, which had endured from the accession of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, took on a golden glow almost entirely due to its last 30 years.
That glow continues to shine and is embodied in this present broadly cultural encyclopaedia compiled by no fewer than 250 British, Commonwealth, and American scholars. At its core are 700 signed entries covering the visual arts, education and science, literature, music, politics and government, and religious, social and economic history for the entire Tudor period, of varying length, but all of them furnished with see also references and short but respectable bibliographies. All readers and researchers will have their own individual interests but it is difficult to conceive that anyone will be disappointed.
For his part, the reviewer was pleased to see separate entries for John and Sebastian Cabot, John Raster, Richard Grenville, Francis Drake, John Davis, Martin Frobisher, Christopher Hatton, Humphrey Gilbert, and a long summary article on “Discovery and exploration”. But no separate article on Richard Hore, Michael Lok, or on the Northwest Passage, although all three are mentioned elsewhere in the text. And complete blanks for Edward Fenton and Christopher Carleill. But you cannot expect absolutely everything in an encyclopaedia spanning 118 years of English history in 765 pages of text.
There is no separate entry for libraries but Thomas Bodley earns one. Robert Cotton is mentioned twice, under “Book ownership”, and as a friend of the antiquarian, William Camden but, since he straddles the Tudor and Early Stuart periods (1571‐1631), he was probably judged more properly to belong to the latter period. Libraries are also mentioned at Oxford and Cambridge universities, while the personal libraries of Gabriel Harvey, Henry VIII, and Matthew Parker do not escape attention. Overall, we probably come out a little better than is usual. Printing, publishing and bookselling has a longish entry and there are separate entries for William Caxton, Abraham Fleming, Richard Grafton, Edward Whitchurch, and John Wolfe, but not Wynken de Worde. Pleasant articles on Emblem, Household, and Jest Books may also be noted here.
A distinct plus to the encyclopaedia is the inclusion of 12 bibliographical essays on the primary and secondary material for the principal subject areas indicated at the beginning of the second paragraph above. Cumulatively, these provide a sound basis for considering the encyclopaedia to be a first‐stop reference and research tool, not least for undergraduates. A full analytic index ensures that the absence of a thematic list of entries is hardly noticed.
