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 1953 text presents the story of an appeal made by priest and poet Robert Southwell, who dared to address himself in writing to Queen Elizabeth I, to plead with her how unfair her proclamation of October 1591 against the Roman Catholics was. Southwell had spent 10 years at Douay and Rome preparing himself to be a member of the Jesuit mission in England. Five years into this, the Queen's proclamation of 1591 was issued, and Southwell's Humble Supplication was immediately written. He intended, it seems, to print it - 'hoping that among so many as shall peruse this short and true relation of our troubles, God will touch some merciful heart to let your Highness understand the extremity of them'. But he was captured in June 1592, and all that remained for him then, as he must have known, was imprisonment, torture and the scaffold.

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.

A scholarly edition of poems by Robert Southwell. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.