This volume is an essential supplement to Pastoral poetry of the English Renaissance: An anthology (2016). The full-length Introduction examines English Renaissance pastoral against the history of the mode from antiquity to the present, with its multifarious themes and social affinities. The study covers many genres - eclogue, lyric, georgic, country-house poem, ballad, romantic epic, prose romance - and major practitioners - Theocritus, Virgil, Sidney, Spenser, Drayton and Milton. It also charts the circulation of pastoral texts, with implications for all early modern poetry. All poems in the Anthology were edited from the original texts; the Companion documents the sources and variant readings in unprecedented detail for a cross-section of early modern poetry. Includes notes on the poets and analytical indices. The Companion is indispensable not only to users of the Anthology but to all students and advanced scholars of Renaissance poetry.

Reviews

'Professor Chaudhuri has now produced the largest anthology of pastoral poetry yet published, a major collection in every sense, which illustrates the broad historical development outlined in his concise introduction, but with an unexpected diversity. It comprises 277 items, ranging from an anonymous 1588 translation of Theocritus to poems from Charles Cotton published posthumously in 1689. In sum, this wonderfully wide-ranging collection ought to be in every library of English literature. Congratulations are due to the editor and publisher, who have also published Chaudhuri's complementary A Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance (2018). The appearance of both volumes will make lovers of pastoral, present and future, deeply indebted to Sukanta Chaudhuri.'
Maria Delgado, Times Higher Education

'In sum, this wonderfully wide-ranging collection ought to be in every library of English literature. Congratulations are due to the editor and publisher, who have also published Chaudhuri's complementary A Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance (2018). The appearance of both volumes will make lovers of pastoral, present and future, deeply indebted to Sukanta Chaudhuri.'
Brian Vickers, School of Advanced Study, University of London, The Review of English Studies

'.this wonderfully wide-ranging collection ought to be in every library of English literature. Congratulations are due to the editor and publisher, who have also published Chaudhuri's complementary A Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance (2018). The appearance of both volumes will make lovers of pastoral, present and future, deeply indebted to Sukanta Chaudhuri.'
Brian Vickers, University of London, The Review of English Studies, Vol. 70, Issue 295, June 2019

Introduction
I: Pastoral
II: Text
Textual notes
Notes on authors
Analytical indices
(A) Genres
(B) Themes
(C) Pastoral and other fictional names
(D) Mythological names and allusions
(E) Biblical names and allusions
(F) Historical and other personal names and allusions
(G) Place-names (geographical and mythological)
Index