English Protestant Literary Networks in the Anglo-Dutch Public Sphere, 1592–1620

English Protestant Literary Networks in the Anglo-Dutch Public Sphere, 1592–1620: The Household of God explores how literature shaped political and religious debate in England and the Low Countries between 1592 and 1620. It argues that plays, poems, pamphlets, and correspondence were used by militant Protestant networks as a form of persuasive “soft power” to influence public opinion, promote international alliances, and advance competing political agendas.Bringing together literary analysis with political and cultural history, the book reconstructs a dynamic Anglo-Dutch public sphere in which writers, soldiers, translators, and exiles collaborated across borders. Case studies ranging from the garrison town of Brill to the London stage reveal how ideas circulated through everyday encounters as well as print and performance.By placing England within a wider European context, the study offers a new account of early modern literary culture as deeply transnational, showing how religious identity, migration, and media combined to shape political thought in a period of crisis and transformation.

Dr. Siobhán Cucu is an Irish scholar and lecturer in Early Modern Studies, specialising in Anglo-Dutch literary and cultural relations. She received her PhD from University College Cork in 2017, where her research examined transnational networks between England and the Low Countries in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. She has taught at a range of institutions including Brunel University London, University College Cork, and the University of Tübingen. Her research focuses on early modern literature, theatre, religion, and the public sphere, with particular interest in transnational cultural exchange.