John N. King – författare

The open-air pulpit in Paul's Churchyard in the City of London, known as Paul's Cross, is one of the most important vehicles of popular public persuasion employed by government from the outset of the Henrician Reformation in the early 1530s until the opening salvos of the Civil War when the pulpit was demolished. Paul's Cross became especially prominent as the public face of government when Thomas Cromwell orchestrated propaganda for the Henrician reformation in the early 1530s. Here too, after the accession of Edward VI, Hugh Latimer preached his 'Sermon on the Ploughers', one of the most celebrated sermons of the English Reformation. While Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London sat here listening to a sermon in 1553, a riot broke out. In November 1559, John Jewel preached his celebrated 'Challenge Sermon' here, arguably the most influential of all sermons delivered at Paul's Cross throughout the Tudor era. Near the end of Elizabeth's reign William Barlow mounted the pulpit to pronounce the government's response to the abortive rebellion of the Earl of Essex. Barlow preached another sermon at Paul's Cross in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Throughout the early modern period, Paul's Cross remained continuously at the epicentre of events which radically transformed England's religious and political identities. And throughout this transformation, animated as it was by a popular 'culture of persuasion' which Paul's Cross itself came to exemplify, the pulpit contributed enormously to the emergence of a new public arena of discourse. Many of these sermons preached at Paul's Cross have been lost; yet a considerable number have survived both in manuscript and in early printed editions. This edition makes available a selection of Paul's Cross sermons representative of this rich period in the maturation of England's popular culture of persuasion.

'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as, I trust, shall never be put out.'Hugh Latimer's famous words of consolation to Nicholas Ridley as they are both about to be burnt alive for heresy come from John Foxe's magisterial Acts and Monuments, popularly known as the Book of Martyrs. This vast collection of unforgettable accounts of religious persecution exerted as great an influence on early modern England and New England as the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It contains many stirring stories of the apprehension, interrogation, imprisonment, and execution of alleged heretics. The narratives not only attest to the fortitude of individuals who suffered for their faith not many years before the birth of Shakespeare, but they also constitute exciting tales filled with graphic details and verbal wit.This modernized selection also includes some of the famous woodcuts that illustrated the original text, as well as providing a comprehensive introduction to Foxe's life and times and the martyrology narrative. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Henry VIII remains one of the most fascinating, notorious and recognizable monarchs in English history. In the five centuries since his accession to the throne, his iconic status has been shaped by different media. From Shakespeare to The Tudors, this book reassesses treatments of Henry VIII in literature, politics, and culture during the period spanned by the king's own reign (1509-47) and the twenty-first century. Historians and literary scholars investigate how representations of the king provoked varied responses from influential writers, artists, and political figures in the decades and centuries following his death. Individual chapters consider interrelated responses to Henry's character and policies during his lifetime; his literary and political afterlife; the king's impact on art and popular culture; and King Henry's debated place in historiography, from the Tudor period to the present.

The consumption of books is closely intertwined with the material conditions of their production. The Tudor period saw both revolutionary progress in printing technology and the survival of traditional forms of communication from the manuscript era. Offering a comprehensive account of Tudor book culture, these essays by experts in early book history consider the formative years of English printing; book format, marketing, and the reception of books; print, politics, and patronage; and connections between reading and religion. They challenge the conventional view of the 1557 foundation of the Stationers' Company as an event that marks a shift between older and newer modes of book production, sale, and reading. Both continuity and change led to the gradual development of late medieval book culture into the genuinely early modern book culture that emerged by the death of Queen Elizabeth.

Religious satire and polemic constitute an elusive presence in Paradise Lost. John N. King shows how Milton's poem takes on new meaning when understood as part of a strategy of protest against ecclesiastical formalism and clericalism. The experience of Adam and Eve before the Fall recalls many Puritan devotional habits. After the Fall, they are prone to 'idolatrous' ritual and ceremony that anticipate the religious 'error' of Milton's own age. Vituperative sermons, broadsides and pamphlets, notably Milton's own tracts, afford a valuable context for recovering the poem's engagement with the violent history of the Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Restoration, while contemporary visual satires help to clarify Miltonic practice. Eighteenth-century critics who attacked breaches of decorum and sublimity in Paradise Lost alternately deplored and ignored a literary and polemical tradition deployed by Milton's contemporaries. This important study, first published in 2000, sheds light on Milton's epic and its literary and religious contexts.

This book was first published in 2006. Second only to the Bible and Book of Common Prayer, John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, known as the Book of Martyrs, was the most influential book published in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most complex and best-illustrated English book of its time, it recounted in detail the experiences of hundreds of people who were burned alive for their religious beliefs. John N. King offers the most comprehensive investigation yet of the compilation, printing, publication, illustration, and reception of the Book of Martyrs. He charts its reception across different editions by learned and unlearned, sympathetic and antagonistic readers. The many illustrations included here introduce readers to the visual features of early printed books and general printing practices both in England and continental Europe, and enhance this important contribution to early modern literary studies, cultural and religious history, and the history of the Book.

Interest in John Foxe and his hugely influential text Acts and Monuments is particularly vibrant at present. This volume, the third to arise from a series of international colloquia on Foxe, collects essays by established and up-and-coming scholars. It broadly embraces five major areas of early modern studies: Roman Catholicism, women and gender, visual culture, the history of the book and historiography. Patrick Collinson provides an entire overview of the field of Foxe studies and further essays place Foxe and his work within the context of their times.

Spanning the different phases of the English Reformation from William Tyndale's 1525 translation of the Bible to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, John King's magisterial anthology brings together a range of texts inaccessible in standard collections of early modern works. The readings demonstrate how Reformation ideas and concerns pervade well-known writings by Spenser, Shakespeare, Sidney, and Marlowe and help foreground such issues as the relationship between church and state, the status of women, and resistance to unjust authority.Plays, dialogues, and satires in which clever laypersons outwit ignorant clerics counterbalance texts documenting the controversy over the permissibility of theatrical performance. Moving biographical and autobiographical narratives from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs and other sources document the experience of Protestants such as Anne Askew and Hugh Latimer, both burned at the stake, of recusants, Jesuit missionaries, and many others. In this splendid collection, the voices ring forth from a unique moment when the course of British history was altered by the fate and religious convictions of the five queens: Catherine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I, Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I.

This book was first published in 2006. Second only to the Bible and Book of Common Prayer, John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, known as the Book of Martyrs, was the most influential book published in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most complex and best-illustrated English book of its time, it recounted in detail the experiences of hundreds of people who were burned alive for their religious beliefs. John N. King offers the most comprehensive investigation yet of the compilation, printing, publication, illustration, and reception of the Book of Martyrs. He charts its reception across different editions by learned and unlearned, sympathetic and antagonistic readers. The many illustrations included here introduce readers to the visual features of early printed books and general printing practices both in England and continental Europe, and enhance this important contribution to early modern literary studies, cultural and religious history, and the history of the Book.

The consumption of books is closely intertwined with the material conditions of their production. The Tudor period saw both revolutionary progress in printing technology and the survival of traditional forms of communication from the manuscript era. Offering a comprehensive account of Tudor book culture, these essays by experts in early book history consider the formative years of English printing; book format, marketing, and the reception of books; print, politics, and patronage; and connections between reading and religion. They challenge the conventional view of the 1557 foundation of the Stationers' Company as an event that marks a shift between older and newer modes of book production, sale, and reading. Both continuity and change led to the gradual development of late medieval book culture into the genuinely early modern book culture that emerged by the death of Queen Elizabeth.

Henry VIII remains one of the most fascinating, notorious and recognizable monarchs in English history. In the five centuries since his accession to the throne, his iconic status has been shaped by different media. From Shakespeare to The Tudors, this book reassesses treatments of Henry VIII in literature, politics, and culture during the period spanned by the king's own reign (1509-47) and the twenty-first century. Historians and literary scholars investigate how representations of the king provoked varied responses from influential writers, artists, and political figures in the decades and centuries following his death. Individual chapters consider interrelated responses to Henry's character and policies during his lifetime; his literary and political afterlife; the king's impact on art and popular culture; and King Henry's debated place in historiography, from the Tudor period to the present.