Historians of early modern England benefit from a rich and varied array of contemporary accounts by individuals that shed light on the local, regional, and wider impact of religious and other policies of successive monarchs. These include the narrative of Robert Parkyn, a Yorkshire priest, of the years 1532–54, Rose Hickman's recollections of Protestant life during the reign of Mary Tudor, to the chronicle of Henry Machyn in 1550–1563, to name but a few. More broadly, too, the history of the book and its import in illuminating various aspects of medieval and early modern popular culture, devotion, piety, reading practices and other related topics has been widely recognised. They have been successfully mined in recent years by various scholars of medieval and early modern England, Ireland, and beyond, from Eamon Duffy to Salvador Ryan and Raymond Gillespie.
Book Review: Philip Schwyzer. Literature, Nationalism, and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
