Poly-Olbion needs some more interpretative work. While it has never fallen out of the view of literary historians, and has been the subject of some important criticism in the past thirty years, we want to generate a fresh wave of interpretation. And we’re keen that this should encompass the whole multi-authored work—including the contributions of John Selden and William Hole—rather than focusing exclusively on Drayton’s poem.

We held a conference in September 2015 at the Royal Geographical Society in London. On the back of this successful event, we are commissioning essays for a volume which we will propose for inclusion in the Oxford University Press series, ‘Early Modern Literary Geographies’. This volume will bring together leading early modern scholars, and will aim to resituate the text fully in relation to current developments in the field. We hope also to publish a separate, and thematically distinctive, set of essays as a special issue of a journal.