John Foxe and His World

John Foxe and His World. Edited by Christopher Highley and John N. King. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. xix + 298 pp. $99.95 cloth.

This collection of essays is derived from papers presented at "John Foxe and His World: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium" (Ohio State University, 1999) and inspired by the John Foxe project, which aims to produce a modern critical edition of the Acts and Monuments. Two analogous collections, both edited by David Loades, preceded this one (John Foxe and the English Reformation, 1997, and John Foxe: An Historical Perspective, 1999). This work is the strongest of the three, representing a major advance in scholarship on Foxes book and milieu.

John Foxe and His World begins with a thorough overview by John King, who provides connections between the essays that transcend the sections into which they are organized. In between an introductory essay by Patrick Collinson and an afterword by Loades, the book is divided into five sections: (1) Historiography; (2) History of the Book; (3) Visual Culture; (4) Roman Catholicism; (5) Women and Gender.

Collinson's introductory article returns to the often debated topic of Foxe and nationalism (instigated by William Haller, Foxes Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation, 1963). However, Collinson's article is much more than a return to this single question; it also looks at Foxe studies in recent years and sets the stage for the concerns of this book. Collinson aptly observes that one of the changes in our understanding of the Acts and Monuments is that "multiple authorship is no longer a...