The volume contains eleven case studies exploring the production, collection, and use of early modern mathematical texts across different social milieus.

A new account of Elizabethan diplomacy with an original archival foundation, this book examines the world of letters underlying diplomacy and political administration by exploring a material text never before studied in its own right: the diplomatic letter-book.

Author Elizabeth R. Williamson argues that a new focus on the central activity of information gathering allows us to situate diplomacy in its natural context as one of several intertwined areas of crown service, and as one of the several sites of production of political information under Elizabeth I. Close attention to the material...

This study examines the transmission and compilation of poetic texts through manuscripts from the late-Elizabethan era through the mid-seventeenth century, paying attention to the distinctive material, social, and literary features of these documents.

The study has two main focuses: the first, the particular social environments in which texts were compiled and, second, the presence within this system of a large body of (usually anonymous) rare or unique poems. Manuscripts from aristocratic, academic, and urban professional environments are examined in separate chapters that highlight...