Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription - Tapa dura

'Gerard Kilroy's Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription is a doubly valuable book. It provides, for the first time, transcriptions of fascinating literary traces of the persecuted Elizabethan Catholic community, and, equally important, it provides a richly nuanced and sympathetic account of these traces. Kilroy illuminates the desperate will to bear witness that brought these works, against all odds, into being and enabled them to survive.' Professor Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University and author of Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare 'In this wonderful and moving book, deploying the most sensitive and exact scholarship, Gerard Kilroy has uncovered the hidden world behind the public face of the Age of Gloriana. Drawing on intimate evidence from hitherto unexamined manuscripts he suggests the myriad acts of resistance that were the real response on the ground to the Protestant settlement in Elizabeth's reign. Far wider than its title suggests, Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription opens up vistas of the central cultural battle of 16th century England, and will be of great value to all interested in the history, literature and culture of the Elizabethan Age.' Michael Wood, author of 'In Search of Shakespeare' (Maya Vision International for BBC/PBS, 2002) '... there is so much that is fascinating in this book...' The Spectator 'This serious contribution on Edmund Campion is destined to be the foundational study on Campion and the plight of 16th-century English Catholicism. Textual analysis, bibliography and index complete this masterful contribution. Recommended for scholars and theological library collections.' Catholic Library World 'What a treasure this book is! It brought me great joy, not just for myself, but for reviving my belief that such a book is still possible in these times - a book of impeccable scholarship, written with an elegant style that is easy to read and finely illustrated... this book is extraordinary. the author has meticulously examined numerous documents - some of which have only recently come to light... The book appeals on a number of levels. In its narrative, it is like a detective story in the way the author builds up a case about what the truth was... anyone who has enjoyed Evelyn Waugh's classic biography, Edmund Campion, will delight in this book, as I have done.' Catholic Times '... a gripping exercise in historical reconstruction that subtly transforms our understanding of this enigmatic episode in English history.' The Tablet 'The virtue of Kilroy's book is to have put into the public domain a new piece of knowledge.' Times Literary Supplement '... a fascinating and original work of scholarship that should give Campion's work the broader readership it clearly deserves.' Ecclesiastical History 'Ashgate have served the author and his material well. With the transcriptions, detailed footnotes, a good bibliography and twelve plates of good quality, this will be an invaluable source for those working in the field.' History 'Gerard Kilroy's book is a detailed, forensic excursion... The 'resurrection' of these works, coming after the riveting forays into the milieu that produced them, make this book a model of what Alison Shell must surely have intended when she called on scholars of late 16th century England to 'recover the voices of the silenced.' Heythrop Journal '... an especially precise and stimulating addition to the burgeoning literature about the Jesuits in England... Kilroy brings together a number of literary skills - transcription, bibliographic description, and a sharp ability to contextualize what might otherwise have been only dry and dusty arcana are only a few of them... Seldom has such fine literature received its first printing in a monograph of such rich and thorough research.' Ben Jonson Journal 'Mr Kilroy has done a great deal of research, and has produced a book which is so full of information that it has to be read very carefully to derive full benefit from it. It sheds much light on a complicated subject.' Recusant History 'There is some wonderful scholarship here which throws bright light on an important aspect of English recusant culture...' Sixteenth Century Journal

The death of Edmund Campion in 1581 marked a disjunction between the world of printed untruth and private, handwritten, truth in early modern England. Gerard Kilroy traces the circulation of manuscripts connected with Campion to reveal a fascinating network that not only stretched from the Court to Warwickshire and East Anglia but also crossed the confessional boundaries. Kilroy shows that in this intricate web Sir John Harington was a key figure, using his disguise as a wit to conceal a lifelong dedication to Campion's memory. Sir Thomas Tresham is shown as expressing his devotion to Campion both in his coded buildings and in a previously unpublished manuscript, Bodleian MS Eng. th. b. 1-2, whose theological and cultural riches are here fully explored. This book provides startling new views about Campion's literary, historical and cultural impact in early modern England. The great strength of this study is its exploitation of archival manuscript sources, offering the first printed text and translation of Campion's Virgilian epic, a fully collated text of 'Why doe I use my paper, ynke and pen', and Harington's four decades of theological epigrams, printed for the first time in the order he so carefully designed. Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription lays the foundations of the first full literary assessment of Campion the scholar, the impact he had on the literature of early modern England, and the long legacy in manuscript writing.