The twenty-five essays in this volume reflect two decades of what has aptly been called the ‘turn to religion’ in historical, literary and cultural studies. From this perspective the sermon is not merely another form of essay, but a ‘radically occasional piece of performed writing, contingent upon the context in and for which [it] was delivered’ (p. 213). The general editors have achieved their goal of assembling ‘a research tool … that provides both a comprehensive guide to the key rhetorical, eccesiological, and historical precepts essential to study of early modern sermons, and a wide-ranging essay collection illustrating the principal trends in recent research’ (p. xiv).

Scholars represented in these pages include veterans of the archives and rare book rooms like Lori Anne Ferrell, Ian Green, Jeanne Shami, Lucy Wooding and Peter McCullough, as well as younger scholars like Arnold Hunt, Greg Kneidel and Emma Rhatigan, whose substantial contributions reflect an enthusiasm for their subjects that guarantees the continued liveliness of this field. The editors have organised their contributors' essays into four major sections. The first section – on ‘Composition, delivery, and reception’ – includes twelve essays that survey a wide range of subjects from rhetorical theory to biblical and patristic resources for preaching to the various venues for preaching, styles of sermon delivery, composition of audiences and patronage for preachers, the reception of sermons, and the process by which sermons made their way into print. McCullough's essay in this section, interpreting Donne's funeral sermon for Sir William Cokayne in the context of a vast array of personal, social, architectural and liturgical information, demonstrates the value of this volume's approach to its subject. Section ii – ‘Sermons in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales’ – includes essays on how the Reformation was preached among the people outside of England who were most directly influenced by the course of the English Reformation. Section iii – ‘English sermons, 1500–1660’ – traces English preaching from just before the Reformation through the official sermons of the early Reformation period to the preaching of the Elizabethan and early Stuart monarchies and the Commonwealth period. Section iv – ‘English sermons, 1660–1720’ – happily extends the story of English preaching beyond the Restoration, the date before which so many scholars of early modern England feel free to conclude their work. Yet the essays in this section of the book clarify the relationships between pre- and post-Civil War institutions in support of preaching and trace the role of preaching in English society through the social tumult of the reign of Charles ii and the political crisis provoked by James ii's Catholicism, leading to the Glorious Revolution and the development of political parties, with their influence on the pulpit rhetoric of the eighteenth century. This volume in the Oxford Handbook series represents a significant contribution to the study of the sermon, and the culture, of early modern England. Its publication is to be welcomed and celebrated.