James Howell's reputation rests primarily on Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ. Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren (1645), which provides an intimate view of contemporary events and in which Howell discourses on a variety of topics. A contemporary, Payne Fisher, wrote in the preface to Howell's Poems on several Choice and Various Subjects (1663) that the letters "teacheth a new way of Epistolizing; and that Familiar Letters may not only consist of words, and a bombast of compliments, but that they are capable of the highest speculations and solidest kind of knowledge." Howell himself describes them as "those rambling Letters of mine, which indeed are nought else than a Legend of the cumbersome Life and various Fortunes of a cadet." Although he is remembered for Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, Howell was a prolific author who composed prose allegories, political pamphlets, histories, lexicographic works, and a smattering of poetry, in addition to translating...