The title of this book parades the current shibboleths of Reformation studies. It was ‘unsettled’; it had a ‘British’ dimension; ‘religious identity’ was in ‘question’; and it all went up to (at least) 1660. What is more it seeks to examine these issues through analyses of early modern literature. Given all that it promises, it is perhaps unsurprising that it ultimately disappoints. It is certainly not the case that all of the essays are unilluminating. Indeed, Hugh Adlington provides a subtle piece on John Donne and canon law; Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen examines the theology of pain in Donne and George Herbert, and their negotiation of pre- and post-Refomation attitudes through poetry; Andrea Brady, in an impressive and provocative piece, argues that, ‘While elegies looked to the past, they also looked to the future, and signal in their use of the vocabulary of commerce the effect of emerging discourses on conceptualizations of the value of the individual and her moral responsibilities for her inner life’ (p. 184); and Oliver Harris offers a lucid and useful account of the ‘antiquarian project’ to preserve the pre-Reformation past which he argues was ‘essentially nonsectarian’ (p. 240). But other contributors have an odd understanding of what might be legitimately discounted without it detrimentally affecting their readers' response. Helen Wilcox's essay on Catholic elements in seventeenth-century Protestant poetry is weakened by her simplification of differences between varieties of Protestantism; Claudia Richter, considering satirical representations of John of Leyden and the Münster Anabaptists, in a footnote states that ‘I am neglecting here the scholarly tradition that derives Elizabethan satire from its Roman predecessors’ and am favouring an anthropological interpretation’ (p. 87 n. 8) without offering a great deal by way of justification; and Richard Todd omits saying much new of interest about Donne in favour of a crude historicisation of modern debates about his ‘apostasy’. Donne's position in this book more generally is problematic. Of course, it would have been surprising had he not featured, but it is surprising that he features as heavily as he does. After all, it is not particularly startling that the Reformation was ‘unsettled’ for Donne, but as a result it is also unclear what wider implications might be drawn from his experience. Ironically, one essay which does seek to engage with the notion of an ‘unsettled’ Reformation in a nuanced way actually shows the limitations of the model. Kevin Laam's excellent reading of Robert Persons's Christian directorie shows that, despite its ‘Protestant adaptation’ by Edmund Bunny, it ‘is anything but neutral’ (p. 206). There was an indissoluble core of Catholic belief, even in a work which appeared non-polemical. Finally, despite its title this book actually has little to say about British issues. The main exception is John Kerrigan's brilliant essay on religion and drama in Caroline Ireland. It is only a pity that this is a version of a chapter in his magisterial Archipelagic English. Anybody with a genuine interest in Anglophone literature produced in the three kingdoms would be far better served by buying that very reasonably priced book than this one, which despite its expense does not even have an index.