Spenserian Tracts

Morgan’s study of key texts situating Edmund Spenser and the plantation in Munster in the late 1590s reveals not only a hatred and abiding fear of the Catholic Irish but also disturbing tensions with the state in England including the Queen herself. In doing so, he has combined traditional historical and literary methods with stylometric document testing to reveal the authorship of these controversial contemporary tracts. Overall this insightful book reimagines the English colonial mentality of the period by examining its underbelly of anonymous texts.