"Cyndia Susan Clegg has written a knowledgeable, detailed, and shrewd study of censorship during the reign of James I...her book has important implications for the ways in which both literary scholars and historians conceive of censorship and describe its effects." American Historical Review
"This study makes a valuable contribution to the burgeoning History of the Book." Alan Stewart, Media History
"...a thoroughly researched and well documented contribution to an important field of study." Joad Raymond, Albion
"[Clegg's] carefully researched book revises liberal (and new-historicist) accounts of how authority responded to politically transgressive texts, and encourages us `to reconsider the cultural hegemony of the Elizabethan state' (pp. 218-9)." Studies in English Literature
"Clegg's familiarity with a range of English literatures dovetails nicely with her knack for historical narrative. This attention to individual cases fills the balance of her book and makes for absorbing reading." H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online
Product Description
This is a revisionist history of press censorship in the rapidly expanding print culture of the sixteenth century. Clegg establishes the nature and source of the controls, and evaluates their means and effectiveness. By considering the literary and bibliographical evidence of books that were censored, and placing them in the literary, religious, economic and political culture of the time, Clegg concludes that press control was neither a routine nor a consistent mechanism. The book will become the standard reference work on Elizabethan press censorship.
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