Spenserian tracts

A detailed exploration of key documentary sources relating to the end of Edmund Spenser’s time as a planter in Ireland in the midst of a dangerous Irish revolt that reveals a lot about the colonial and religious mentalities involved in Elizabethan England’s imperial venture in Ireland. It makes novel use of stylometric tests to delve deeper into the authorship of these controversial texts.

Morgan’s study of key texts situating Edmund Spenser and the plantation in Munster in the late 1590s reveals not only a hatred and abiding fear of the Catholic Irish but also disturbing tensions with the state in England including the Queen herself. In doing so, he has combined traditional historical and literary methods with stylometric document testing to reveal the authorship of these controversial contemporary tracts. Overall this insightful book reimagines the English colonial mentality of the period by examining its underbelly of anonymous texts.