This is a work of most impressive painstaking and discerning intelligence and discovery, with many pages of exquisitely balanced interpretation. Rachel Dunn Zhang uncovers the 'ties that bind' in the literature of the English Civil War, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, in the delicate articulation of constancy and the treatment of formal obligations, such as oaths, whatever the allegiance of the writer. The reader encounters new readings of famous poetry, such as that of Lanyer, Herrick, Milton, Marvell and The Book of Common Prayer , but also a host of valuable lesser-known works, some unknown until very recently, such as the emblems of Hester Pulter or Sir Percy Herbert's romance The Princess Cloria , these now much more approachable in the digital age. Every chapter is a must-read for students as well as specialists in the future, and all readers will be galvanized by the turn to contemporary concerns with freedom, beauty, ugliness and hope that comes in the epilogue.