Part of the Character Sketches series, this title looks at Elizabethan writers. The series features compact guides devoted to literary, artistic and historic personalities, circles and themes. They contain portraits in a variety of media, all selected from the National Portrait Gallery's diverse collection. The illustrations are accompanied by substantial and relevant quotations from the works of the people featured, as well as contemporary descriptions and anecdotes from unpublished as well as published source. The books should be of interest to general readers and students alike. Charles Nicholls is the author of The Creature in the Map, The Fruit Palace, Borderlines and The Reckoning (which won the Crime Writers' Association Award for Nonfiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize).