John Nichols's The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources: Volume I: 1533 to 1571

by Jayne Elisabeth Archer (editor), Elizabeth Clarke (Editor), Elizabeth Goldring (Editor)

John Nichols's The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (1788-1823) has long been an indispensable reference tool for scholars working on Elizabethan court and culture - despite the serious limitations of an antiquarian edition now two centuries old. This old-spelling edition of the early modern materials contained in Nichols's Progresses is edited to high and consistent standards, and based on a critical re-examination of printed and manuscript sources. It is structured by a narrative of the two sets of annual progresses undertaken by Queen Elizabeth I: the 'summer progresses, ' when Elizabeth travelled throughout southern England and the Midlands, visiting cities as far afield as Bristol, Coventry, Norwich, and Southampton; and the 'winter progresses, ' when Elizabeth moved between her residences in and around London, including Richmond, Hampton Court, and Whitehall. New editions of the major progress entertainments - Kenilworth, Woodstock, Elvetham, Cowdray, Ditchley, and Harefield - are set alongside accounts of civic receptions, tilts and Accession Day entertainments, and non-dramatic texts, many of which have not been published since Nichols, including verses delivered by Eton scholars before the Queen (1563); John Lesley's Oratio (1574); Gabriel Harvey's Gratulationum Valdinensium (1578); and the Oxford and Cambridge verses on the death of Queen Elizabeth (1603). The editions are supported by translations of all non-English material, full scholarly annotation, illustrations, and maps. This will make John Nichols's The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources the most comprehensive collection of early modern texts pertaining to the court and culture of Queen Elizabeth.
Volume I covers the years from 1533 to 1571.

758 pages, Hardcover

First published June 12, 2012

About the author

Dr. Jayne Elisabeth Archer is lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Literature in the Department of English Literature, Aberystwyth University. She is an Associate Fellow of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick, where she spent four years as AHRC postdoctoral Research Fellow on the John Nichols Project. She is co-editor of The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), and has published articles on Elizabethan and Jacobean masques, early modern women's receipt books, and alchemy in early modern literature. She is currently working on a book-length study of the relationship between housewifery and natural philosophy in early modern literature.