This book is intended to be the first comprehensive reassessment of early Tudor literature for over 30 years, covering all major authors and genres in the formative period between the accession of Henry VII in 1485 and the death of Henry VIII in 1547. It looks at how successive political issues impinged upon literature. Early 16th-century writing is replete with the concern to secure and retain patronage. The literature of the mid-Tudor period reflects the intellectual ascendancy of such movements as humanism. By the 1530s and 1540s religious reform occupies the centre of the literary stage. The functions of early Tudor writing are multivarious. Some express thoughts and emotions stemming from authors' private lives. Yet Tudor literature was also used allegorically, to ariculate tendentious, even treasonable, views. Hawe in the Conforte of Louers uses the conventional forms of courtly love to warn of treasonous plots on the part of personal enemies at court, while Wyatt uses the same device to convey his grievance at losing Anne Boleyn to the King. The inextricable link between early Tudor literature and politics is starkly demonstrated by the fact that so many writers were imprisoned or executed.