SOURCE: Patterson, Annabel. “Rethinking Tudor Historiography.” South Atlantic Quarterly 92, No. 2 (Spring 1993): 185-208.

In the essay below, Patterson argues that Holinshed's Chronicles offers a uniquely multi-vocal documentation of Elizabethan history, one which imagined a middle-class readership interested in drawing its own conclusions from the primary sources.

More then ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes, Of triviall household trash he knowes.

—John Donne, Satire 4

Vast, vulgar Tomes … recover'd from out of innumerable Ruins.

—Edmund Bolton, Hypercritica

Voluminous Holingshead … full of confusion and commixture of unworthy relations.

—Peter Heylyn, Microcosmus

The project was large enough to absorb impure motives. So, at least, I have come to believe of the gargantuan work we continue to refer to as Holinshed's Chronicles, despite the fact that Raphael Holinshed was only one of nearly a dozen persons who contributed to the project over two decades and in two quite different editions, the first appearing in...