English Literature in the Sixteenth Century

"People think of C S Lewis as a novelist really now, of course; he was an English don at Magdalen. I chose it really because it’s a work which I’ve found incredibly useful. It just is, in its way, a brilliant book, because it’s both scholarly and readable, comprehensive and perceptive. He’s interested in the intellectual background of the period. It covers all Elizabethan and early Jacobean literature, excluding drama of course, which is a big exclusion, but that would have needed another book. It’s quite critical – that’s a good thing – and lively, and he goes through it chronologically. It’s also very useful and illuminating: when he comes to an author there’s a footnote with a potted biography. He really gets one interested in the writers who interest him or who he values, and makes you want to read them – or not read them. I found that for instance, reading about Spenser, who I had found quite hard going. Really the intellectual moral background of the Elizabethan era, and the intricacy of it. I think he’s got a very strong moral sense, which comes across in his novels too. He’s quite interested in the moral backgrounds of writers of the period, and is good on Fox and the religious writers of the time, as well as the poets and writers of romances and so on."