The Burley manuscript is a miscellany compiled in the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth century, unique in size and variety. In this study,
annotated transcriptions are given of all of the private letters in
English and all the English verse. Incipit transcriptions and
identification are provided for each of the other items, including those
in foreign languages. The history and provenance of the collection are
described in detail, with lengthy notes on memorial transcription of
verse and prose, and the clandestine interception of letters. The book
makes available texts, annotations and commentary that will have an
impact on a wide range of scholarship. It will be found useful to
literary scholars, editors, and social historians, illuminating such
diverse subjects as the circulation of verse, the correspondence of John
Donne, the self-fashioning of English gentlemen after the classical
Romans of their class and the government's paranoiac spying on its own
citizens.