Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

This book is a complete edition of the authentic poems, English and Latin, of the Elizabethan priest, poet and martyr S. Robert Southwell, offering new texts based on the very manuscripts which were circulated in secret among English Catholics in the years after the poet's death. This edition, by drawing its texts directly from a complete re-examination of these contemporary manuscripts, makes these poems more than items of literature; it allows them to regain some of their original purpose of communicating forbidden theologies and doctrines amongst a criminalised and near-silenced readership of secret, persecuted groups. These are the poems of those Catholics who did not or could not flee the country as the Elizabethan State bore down upon their faith in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. Southwell's new visions and visualisations in English bear their fruit a generation later in the works of Donne and Herbert. His rare Latin verses (here widely available for the first time, accompanied by a new translation) show also that that the Augustans, even Milton, owe him a creative debt.