James Stuart—James VI of Scotland and I of England—was a prolific author. Beginning while still in his teens, James wrote on a variety of topics, ranging from religion to rulership to the evils of tobacco. Most modern scholarly analysis of James' writings begins with the assumption that these texts constituted a deliberate performance of a carefully wrought public persona, and Astrid Stilma's erudite new monograph does not depart from this basic supposition. Stilma's main emphasis, however, is not on James' own textual self-construction, but rather on how a particular interpretive community—in this case, Dutch Protestants—“printed, sold, bought, read and translated” (13) these texts in order to serve their own particular political and religious agendas.

Stilma examines Dutch translations of James' works (translated between 1593 and 1603 from London editions) and finds that Dutch Protestants used James' ideas to create and maintain a protestant identity for themselves, and to convince themselves that James would continue Elizabeth's support of the protestant Low Countries' fight against Roman Catholic Spain. When James ascended to the English throne, he may have meant to present himself as Rex Pacificus, but the political and religious anxieties of those who translated and disseminated James' writings into Dutch shaped him into “an ultra-Protestant knight in shining armour” (16). This is not to say that the translators deliberately misrepresented James' ideas; Stilma establishes that overt manipulation was rare, with translators and publishers relying more on prefaces and other “paratextual” material to frame James' words to their and their audiences' liking.

The first chapter of A King Translated introduces readers to the Dutch translators and publishers, while the second chapter offers background and context concerning the art and science of translation in early modern Europe. The remaining four chapters focus on particular texts. In chapter 3, Stilma looks at The Battle of Lepanto, James' epic poem recounting a 1571 naval victory over the Turkish fleet by a confederation of Christian navies. Much has been written about whether or not James implicitly sanctioned Roman Catholicism with his celebration of Don John, the undeniably Catholic leader of the Christians. Stilma does not think so, and argues that in approaching the poem as a Protestant allegory, Abraham Van der Myl's 1593 translation preserved the spirit and intention of the original piece when it made a case for the inevitability of protestant ascendency.

Perhaps James' most well-known work is Basilikon Doron. Written as a letter to James' eldest son, Basilikon Doron was published in Scotland in 1599. London editions appeared within days of James' ascension to the English throne in 1603, and translations into a variety of languages followed close by. Vincent Meusevoet's Dutch translation—Een Coninglijck Gheschenck—appeared in print by mid-June of 1603, making it the first published translation of the text that many saw as “James' calling card” (126). James' unflagging support for divine right of kings, and his abhorrence of rebellion of any kind is much in evidence in Basilikon Doron, apparently at odds with the republican flavor of Dutch Protestantism, and certainly incompatible with the foundations of the Dutch Republic. Nonetheless, as Stilma demonstrates in chapter 4, paratextual apparatus can make a big difference. The Dutch republican Jacob Viverius penned an opening sonnet to Een Coninglijck Gheschenck, in place of James' own sonnet that prefaced Basilikon Doron. Both poems extolled the virtues of Christian kingship, and, as Stilma points out, adopt similar didactic tones. But where James makes obedience to God's will the precursor of a “happie raigne,” Viverius makes obedience to God's will a condition of keeping one's crown, thereby assuming a “contract-based monarchy under God” (173).

Viverius also supplied an original poem that prefaced a translation of Meditatiouns, a collection of James' efforts at biblical exegesis (and the focus of chapter 5). James' 1597 Daemonologie, a treatise on witchcraft and the occult, is at the center of chapter 6. Two translations of Daemonologie survive, affording Stilma the opportunity to highlight the difference between translating verbatim (Jasper Troyen) and translating for sense (Meusevoet). Neither Meditatiouns or Daemonologie contain rhetoric that might be read as significantly at odds with the tenets of Dutch Protestantism; consequently, Stilma's thesis that James enjoyed little control over how his words were received and disseminated beyond England finds stronger support in the chapters concerning The Battle of Lepanto and Basilikon Doron. Nonetheless, A King Translated makes a strong case against the notion that James successfully orchestrated and oversaw translations of his writings as a way of constructing and controlling his image as the English monarch.

Astrid Stilma identifies herself—at least for the purposes of this book—as an historian primarily interested in discerning how texts operated within their original context. In A King Translated, she aptly demonstrates the benefits of such an approach. Drawing on English studies, Dutch studies, and history, her interdisciplinary approach yields insight into how interpretative communities complicated James' attempts to use the written word to establish his persona and promote his policies. Along the way, A King Translated offers the reader fascinating glimpses into the processes, politics, and technologies of translation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.