This is the first comprehensive account of English Renaissance literature in the context of the culture that shaped it: the courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the tumult of Catholic and Protestant alliances during the Reformation, the age of printing and of New World discovery. The Companion covers developments in poetry, prose, religious writing, drama, satire and humanism in fourteen newly-commissioned essays, written by experts for student readers. A detailed chronology of major literary achievements concludes with a list of authors and their dates.