First published in 1934, Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography is a critical commentary on a chronologically arranged bibliography of nearly two thousand contemporary printed and manuscript works. Poets, preachers and philosophers, mathematicians, physicians and astrologers, sailors, merchants and company-promoters were contributors to the absorbing medley that comprises the geographical literature of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. For this was the fading twilight of that Golden Age of unspecialized learning when all knowledge lay within one man’s compass. This book will be of interest to historians, economists, sociologists and litterateurs.

First published in 1934, Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography is a critical commentary on a chronologically arranged bibliography of nearly two thousand contemporary printed and manuscript works. Poets, preachers and philosophers, mathematicians, physicians and astrologers, sailors, merchants and company-promoters were contributors to the absorbing medley that comprises the geographical literature of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. For this was the fading twilight of that Golden Age of unspecialized learning when all knowledge lay within one man's compass. This book will be of interest to historians, economists, sociologists and litterateurs.

The story of discovery and mapmaking is one of pushing back shadows," writes Andrew Taylor, and "none in the last two thousand years achieved as much as Gerard Mercator in extending the boundaries of what could be comprehended." His life encompassed most of the turbulent, extraordinary sixteenth century, a time when revolutions would engulf religion, science, and civilization. Almost extinguished by the Inquisition, Mercator's genius lay in making maps, and his achievement did nothing less than revolutionize the study of geography. Appropriately for an era undergoing radical change, Mercator was full of contradiction, tied to knowledge and beliefs of the past while forging a new path. He never traveled beyond northern Europe, yet he had the imagination to draw the entire world anew and to solve a problem that had baffled sailors and scientists for centuries: how a curved Earth could be faithfully rendered on a flat surface so as to allow for accurate navigation. His "projection" was so visionary that it is used by NASA to map Mars today. Andrew Taylor has beautifully captured Mercator amidst the turmoil and opportunity of his times and the luminaries who inspired his talent-his teacher and business partner, Gemma Frisius; the English magus, John Dee; his benefactor, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, his cartographic collaborator, Abraham Ortelius. The World of Gerard Mercator is a masterful biography of one of the men most responsible for the modern world.

This is a survey of the voyages of English navigators, from the pioneers of the late 15th century to the scientific expeditions of the early 19th century, not only in South American waters, but also the Caribbean and North America.

The current surge of interest in the Elizabethan poet, dramatist, prose-writer and critic, Thomas Nashe, follows years of neglect or undisguised hostility. Yet, as early allusions testify, Nashe was a name which imposed itself on contemporary culture. Nashe annoyed and even disturbed his contemporaries, but they certainly paid attention to him because he pioneered new approaches to writing, and indeed to living, and because he was an astute critic. The essays in this volume have been chosen for the skill with which they present diverse approaches to key issues in Nashe. All Nashe's texts are covered, as are his relationships with contemporaries, like Shakespeare. The introduction analyses different approaches, locating them in the history of Nashe criticism, and suggests areas for future research. It argues that Nashe's importance to Renaissance studies lies in his anomalousness, as he forces us to rethink the Renaissance. He makes the Renaissance unfamiliar again, and pushes criticism out of its comfort zone.

The period between 1585 (when Elizabeth formally committed her military support to the Dutch wars against Spain) and 1604 (when James at last brought it to an end) was one in which English life was preoccupied by the menace and actuality of war. The same period spans English drama’s coming of age, from Tamburlaine to Hamlet. In this thought-provoking book, Nick de Somogyi draws on a wide range of contemporary military literature (news-letters and war-treatises, maps and manuals), to demonstrate how deeply wartime experience influenced the production and reception of Elizabethan theatre. In a series of vivid parallels, the roles of soldier and actor, the setting of battlefield and stage, and the context of playhouse and muster are shown to have been rooted in the common experience of war. The local armoury served as a props department; the stage as a military lecture-hall. News from the front line has always been shrouded in the fog of war. Shakespeare’s Rumour is here seen as kindred to such equally dubious messengers as his Armado, Falstaff or Pistol; soldiers have always told tall tales, military ghost-stories that are here shown to have seeped into such narratives as The Spanish Tragedy and Henry V. This book concludes with a sustained account of Hamlet, a play which both dramatises the Elizabethan context of war-fever, and embodies in its three variant texts the war and peace that shaped its production. By affording scrutiny to each of its title’s components, Shakespeare’s Theatre of War provides a compelling argument for reassessing the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries within the enduring context of the military culture and wartime experience of his age.

Presents a history of commerce, covering such topics as colonial expansion, credit and banking, and the development of trading companies.