Gender, Culture and Politics in England, 1560-1640

An invaluable synthesis of scholarly material for undergraduates studying early modern gender, literature and social history ... The writing is accessible and elegant ... The authors’ conceptual framework of ‘inversion’ and emphasis on the importance of reciprocity in gender relations are stimulating contributions to the historiography. * The English Historical Review *
No-one is better placed to forensically examine the powerful idea of the world turned upside-down, and the unruly women and incompetent men that peopled popular fantasy. In this far-reaching exploration of families, rituals, politics and drama, we begin to understand how fragile order could seem in the early modern world, and why ordinary people as well as monarchs were so preoccupied with testing its limits. An outstanding and necessary piece of social and cultural history. * Laura Gowing, King’s College London, UK *
Tracing gender’s power in domesticity, drama and civic life, Susan Amussen and David Underdown provide an object lesson in the benefits of writing across the artificial separations of political, social and cultural history. A must-read for everyone eager to understand the inner worlds of early modern peoples. * Cynthia B. Herrup, John R. Hubbard Professor of History and Professor of Law, Emerita, University of Southern California, USA *
The book is the product of the enduring partnership between two major historians of early modern England, first planned by David Underdown, and brought to triumphant fruition by Susan Amussen. Linking the politics of the royal court to intimate local conflicts and to stories told on the stage, the book offers a capacious account of the cultural, social and political history of early modern England, an account to which gender is central. * Ann Hughes, Professor of Early Modern History, Emeritus, Keele University, UK *
Gender, Culture and Politics is a remarkable achievement, representing the culmination of a lifetime’s reading and thinking by one of the foremost social historians of his generation. Susan Amussen has done a quite brilliant job of bringing to the press a volume that might, given the tragic circumstances of its composition, have been lost to posterity. The book is a wonderful summation of David Underdown’s scholarship: conceptually sophisticated, empirically rigorous and mellifluously written. It will be required reading for all students of society, culture and politics in early modern England. * Steve Hindle, W.M. Keck Foundation Director of Research, The Huntington Library, USA *