In this, the first comprehensive study of post-Reformation provincial English portraiture, Robert Tittler investigates the growing affinity for secular portraiture in Tudor and early Stuart England, a cultural and social phenomenon which can be said to have produced a 'public' for that genre. He breaks new ground in placing portrait patronage and production in this era in the broad social and cultural context of post-Reformation England, and in distinguishing between native English provincial portraiture, which was often highly vernacular, and foreign-influenced portraiture of the court and...

Until recently, the reign of Mary Tudor was generally seen as a 'sterile interlude' in the Tudor century, with Mary herself dismissed as 'Bloody Mary'. Extensive research in the past several decades has overturned these assumptions in almost every respect. In this succinct and up-to-date introduction to Mary's reign, Tittler and Richards provide new insight into the circumstances of Mary's accession and go on to show that her reign was a lot more stable, and her regime much more competent and innovative, than once believed. This fully revised third edition includes a diverse range of primary...