Kevin Sharpe was Director of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies and Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, UK.

Reading Authority and Representing Rule in Early Modern England explores the publication and reception of authority in early modern England. Examples are drawn from a broad range of source, including royal portraits, architecture, coins and medals and written texts.This is a volume that presents the history of society and state as a cultural as well as an institutional or political history.

The author, Kevin Sharpe, was a leading scholar in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of early modern Britain. He pioneered the application of methods and approaches from other disciplines, such as literary criticism, reception studies and visual culture, to the study of the English Renaissance state. This will be an important text for anyone studying early modern England, as well as for those interested in the methods of cultural history and the explication of written and visual texts.

Introduction: Reading Authority and Representing Rule
I Reading Authority
Uncommon Places? The Reading Notes of Sir William Drake
Reading James Writing
Reading Revelations: Prophecy, Hermeneutics and Politics in Early Modern Britain, 1560-1720
Transplanting Revelation, Transferring Meaning: Reading Apocalypse in Early Modern England, Scotland and New England
II Representing Rule
Virtues, Passions and Politics in Early Modern England' a 'Sacralization and Demystification: The Publicisation of Monarchy in Early Modern England
Van Dyck, The Royal Image and The Caroline Court
"So Hard A Text"?: Images of Charles 1, 1612-1700'
"Something of Monarchy": Milton and Cromwell, Republicanism and Regality
Restoration and Reconstitution: Politics, Society and Culture in the England of Charles II
"Thy Longing Country's Darling and Desire": Aesthetics, Sex and Politics in the England of Charles II
Whose Life Is It Anyway? Writing Early Modern Monarchs and the 'Life' of James II