A Companion to Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland is an edited collection of nineteen essays written by a range of experts and some newer scholars in the areas of early modern British and Irish history and religion. In addition to English Catholicism, developments in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as ongoing connections and interactions with Continental Catholicism, are well incorporated throughout the volume. Many currents of the latest scholarship are addressed and advanced, including religious minorities and exiles, women and gender studies, literary and material culture, religious identity construction, and, within Catholic studies, the role of laity as well as clergy, and of female as well as male religious. In all, these essays significantly advance the movement of early modern British and Irish Catholicism from the historiographical margins to an evolving, but ultimately more capacious and accurate, historical mainstream.
