Holinshed, Raphael | Annabel Patterson (essay date 1993)
Annabel Patterson (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: Patterson, Annabel. “Rethinking Tudor Historiography.” South Atlantic Quarterly 92, No. 2 (Spring 1993): 185-208.
[In the essay below, Patterson argues that Holinshed's Chronicles offers a uniquely multi-vocal documentation of Elizabethan history, one which imagined a middle-class readership interested in drawing its own conclusions from the primary sources.]
More then ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes, Of triviall household trash he knowes.
—John Donne, Satire 4
Vast, vulgar Tomes … recover'd from out of innumerable Ruins.
—Edmund Bolton, Hypercritica
Voluminous Holingshead … full of confusion and commixture of unworthy relations.
—Peter Heylyn, Microcosmus
The project was large enough to absorb impure motives. So, at least, I have...
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