This wide-ranging compilation of texts illustrates clearly the great variety of criticism of English literature on offer during the Renaissance period.

This is the first comprehensive collection of English Renaissance literary criticism to appear for nearly a century. Brian Vickers has brought together a wide-ranging selection of texts, some well-known (such as Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry, the most brilliant critical essay of the whole Renaissance, here given complete), some little-known (Dudley North's account of Metaphysical poetry), and one being printed for the first time (John Ford's elegy on John Fletcher).

English Renaissance Literary Criticism may well become the standard reference collection ... the greatest coup is John Ford's elegy on John Fletcher, discovered by the late Jeremy Maule and printed here for the first time.