Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–98) was one of the founders of the Irish Republican national movement, and his political ideas and the circumstances of his life and early death have become powerful political weapons in the hands of later nationalists. Today his name still arouses strong emotions, and he is hailed as the first prophet of an independent Ireland. Tracing Tone's life from his upbringing as a member of the Protestant elite to his exile, trial, and suicide, this new edition of the awardwinning biography brings the book up to date with new scholarship and fresh historical insights.

This volume seeks to address a relatively neglected subject in the field of English reformation studies: the reformation in its urban context. Drawing on the work of a number of historians, this collection of essays will seek to explore some of the dimensions of that urban stage and to trace, using a mixture of detailed case studies and thematic reflections, some of the ways in which religious change was both effected and affected by the activities of townsmen and women.

This book provides an overview of the establishment and use of parish libraries in early modern England and includes a thematic analysis of surviving marginalia and readers' marks. This book is the first direct and detailed analysis of parish libraries in early modern England and uses a case-study approach to the examination of foundation practices, physical and intellectual accessibility, the nature of the collections, and the ways in which people used these libraries and read their books.

Through an analysis of the career of the eminent courtier Sir Thomas Overbury, Epistolary Courtiership and Dramatic Letters re-examines what is meant by courtiership in the Jacobean period. With a particular focus on the years between 1609 and 1613, the book brings together many of the letters surrounding the scandal leading to Overbury's murder and provides an examination of epistolarity in the context of humanist and legal learning. Defining key themes of social mobility, homosociality and the legal power of James VI and I, it exposes the mechanisms by which men rose at his court and provides a context for a new reading of contemporary dramatic texts by Shakespeare, Webster and Chapman. The book argues that the changing performance of courtiership at James's court, the wider knowledge of that reflected in contemporary letters and consequently shifting attitudes, all alter the performance of courtiership in the playhouse.