The 'Shepheard's Nation'

This is a study of a group of Jacobean Spenserian poets, William Browne, George Wither, and Christopher Brooke, and of the ways in which these writers represented themselves as a distinctive oppositional community in the years 1612 to 1625. This Spenserian community had its social basis in the culture of early modern London and was given physical expression through the practice of collaboration and an innovative use of print. Yet, it was also an 'imagined community' expressed through fictions that drew on common literary and political traditions. The result was a type of literary commonwealth that claimed the authority to engage in public debate on issues of politics and culture. By drawing attention to the relationships between writers and the traditions and environments that enable textual communities, this book provides a new perspective for studying early modern culture.