Review of the hardback: '… important, thought-provoking and frequently witty new study … Alison Shell is an assured and engaging literary guide, deeply read in the historical scholarship of the period, and deftly employing theoretical insights without jargon or prolixity.' The Times Literary Supplement

• Introduction: Catholicism and oral culture in early modern England; 1. Abbey ruins, sacrilege narratives and the Gothic imagination; 2. Anti-Popery and the supernatural; 3. Answering back: orality and controversy; 4. Martyrs and confessors in oral culture; Conclusion: orality, tradition and truth.

Review of the hardback: '… important, thought-provoking and frequently witty new study … Alison Shell is an assured and engaging literary guide, deeply read in the historical scholarship of the period, and deftly employing theoretical insights without jargon or prolixity.' The Times Literary Supplement

• Introduction: Catholicism and oral culture in early modern England; 1. Abbey ruins, sacrilege narratives and the Gothic imagination; 2. Anti-Popery and the supernatural; 3. Answering back: orality and controversy; 4. Martyrs and confessors in oral culture; Conclusion: orality, tradition and truth.