Online Resources
EEBO (Early English Books Online) is currently the best free place to access the full text of Poly-Olbion and other works by Drayton and his circle.
The Archive of Dulwich College in London, England, holds thousands of pages of manuscripts left to the College by its founder, the eminent actor Edward Alleyn (1566-1626). This archive includes his personal and professional papers and those he inherited from his father-in-law Philip Henslowe (d. 1616), including the latter’s famous diary, As a group, these manuscripts comprise the largest and most important single extant archive of material on the professional theatre and dramatic performance in early modern England. Drayton spent a number of years working as a jobbing playwright for Henslowe and the Rose Theatre, and details about his plays, including titles, payments and props, feature repeatedly in the diary.
The Folger Shakespeare Library
The magnificent Folger Library in Washington DC is vast and varied. The vault houses about 160,000 printed books; 60,000 manuscripts; 90,000 prints, drawings, photographs, paintings, and other works of art; and a wealth of performance history, from a quarter of a million playbills to films, recordings, and stage costumes. Within these riches, it has a collection of zoomable William Hole maps from Poly-Olbion. It also has the full text of Drayton’s only extant play, Sir John Oldcastle.
Books and Articles
This list is just a selection and is by no means exhaustive.
Anonymous. “Review of The Works of Michael Drayton Esq.” Monthly Review 9 (1753)
Anonymous. “Biographical Sketches of English Poets: Michael Drayton.” Town and Country Magazine 20 (1788)
Anonymous. “Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.” Retrospective Review 2 (1854)
Anonymous. “Mr. Bullen’s Selections from Drayton.” Spectator 57 (1884)
Anonymous. “Drayton’s England.” Times Literary Supplement, August 31, 1933
Anonymous. “Drayton’s Discovery of England.” Times Literary Supplement, May 8, 1953
Berthelot, J.A. Michael Drayton. New York: Twayne, 1967
Blunden, E. “The Happy Island.” Times Literary Supplement, August 17, 1922
Bookhunter. “Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.” Bookworm 2 (1889)
Boyd, P. “Trailing Michael Drayton.” Sewanee Review 44 (1936)
Brink, J.R. Michael Drayton Revisited. Boston: Twayne, 1990
Brydges, E.S. “Michael Drayton.” Imaginative Biography. 2 vols. London: Saunders and Oatley, 1834
Capp, B. “The Poet and the Bawdy Court: Michael Drayton and the Lodging-House World in Early Stuart London.” The Seventeenth Century 10 (1995)
Cawley, R.R. “Drayton and the Voyagers.” PMLA 38 (1923)
Cawley, R.R. “Drayton’s Use of Welsh History.” Studies in Philolog y 22 (1925)
Coleridge, H. “Drayton.” Essays and Marginalia. 2 vols. London: Moxon, 1851
Constable, K. “Drayton and the Holland Family.” The Modern Language Review 26 (1931)
Curran, J.E. Jr. “The History Never Written: Bards, Druids, and the Problem of Antiquarianism in Poly-Olbion.” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998)
Curry, J.T. ”Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.” Notes and Q ueries 108 (1903)
Duchemin, H.P. Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion: A Critical and Historical Study. PhD diss. Birkbeck College, University of London, 1975.
Duchemin, H.P. “Drayton’s Poly-Olbion and the Alexandrine Couplet.” Studies in Philolog y 77 (1980)
Duchemin, H.P. “Barbarous Ignorance and Base Detraction’: The Struggles of Michael Drayton.” Albion 14 (1982)
Duncan-Jones, K. “Drayton on Nashe and Shakespeare.” Notes and Q ueries 53 (2006)
Elton, O. An Introduction to Michael Drayton. Manchester: Spenser Society, 1895
Elton, O. Michael Drayton: A Critical Study. London: Constable, 1905
Ewell, B.C. “Drayton’s Poly-Olbion: England’s Body Immortalized.” Studies in Philolog y 75 (1978)
Fry, J.F. “Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.” Notes and Queries 108 (1903)
G., W. “Drayton and Wordsworth.” Notes and Queries 41 (1870)
Galbraith, D.I. Architectonics of Imitation in Spenser, Daniel, and Drayton.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000
Gourvitch, I. “The Welsh Element in the Poly-Olbion: Drayton’s Sources.” Review of English Studies 4 (1928)
Gourvitch, I. “Drayton’s Debt to Geoffrey of Monmouth.” Review of English Studies 4 (1928)
Guffey, G.R. “Spenser, Drayton, and the Question of Britain.” The Review of English Studies 51 (2000)
Guffey, G.R. “Michael Drayton’s Brilliant Career.” Proceedings of the British Academy 125 (2004) Hannyngton, H.C. “Michael Drayton.” Times Literary Supplement, December 17, 1931 Hannyngton, H.C. “An Englishman’s Home.” Times Literary Supplement, October 4, 1941 Hardin, R.F. “The Composition of Poly-Olbion and The Muses Elizium.” Anglia 86 (1968)
Hardin, R.F. Michael Drayton and the Passing of Elizabethan England. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973.
Harner, J.L. Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton: A Reference Guide. Boston: Hall, 1980.
Harrison, T.P. “Drayton’s Herbals.” University of Texas Studies in English 23 (1943)
Haskell, G.P. Drayton’s Secondary Modes: A Critical Study. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1936.
Hebel, W.J. “Drayton and Shakespeare.” Modern Language Notes 41 (1926)
Hewlett, M. “Poly-Olbion.” In a Green Shade: A Country Commentary. London: Bell, 1920.
Hiller, G.G. “‘Sacred Bards’ and ‘Wise Druids’: Drayton and his Archetype of the Poet.” English Literary History 51 (1984)
Hood, E.U. “Untitled Letter on Poly-Olbion.” Gentleman’s Magazine 97 (1827)
Hull, V.E. “The English and Welsh Topographical Sources of Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.” PhD diss. Harvard University, 1926.
Johnson, P. “Michael Drayton, Prophet without Audience.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 11 (1978) Lodge, J. “Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.” Times Literary Supplement, December 24, 1931
Macdonald, C. “Drayton’s ‘Tidy’ and Chaucer’s ‘Tidif’.” The Review of English Studies 21 (1945)
Marshall, T. “Michael Drayton and the Writing of Jacobean Britain.” The Seventeenth Century 15 (2000)
McRae, A. “Tree-felling in Early Modern England: Michael Drayton’s Environmentalism,” Review of English Studies (2011)
Moore,W. H. “The Fusion of History and Poetry in the Poly-Olbion.” PhD diss. Harvard University, 1963.
Moore,W. H. “Sources of Drayton’s Conception of Poly-Olbion.” Studies in Philolog y 65 (1968)
Newdigate, B.H. Michael Drayton and His Circle. Oxford: Blackwell, 1961.
Noyes, R. “The Influence and Reputation of Michael Drayton.” PhD diss. Harvard University, 1932.
O., C.T. “On Michael Drayton.” European Magazine 10 (1786).
Oldys, W. “Michael Drayton.” Biographia Britannica. 3 vols. London: W. Innys, et al., 1750
Praz, M. “Michael Drayton.” English Studies 28 (1947)
Prescott, A. L. “Drayton’s Muse and Selden’s ‘Story’: The Interfacing of Poetry and History in Poly-Olbion.” Studies in Philology 87 (1990)
Prescott, A. L. “Marginal Discourse: Drayton’s Muse and Selden’s ‘Story’.” Studies in Philology 88 (1991)
Rees, J. “Hogs, Gulls, and Englishmen: Drayton and the Virginian Voyages.” Yearbook of English Studies 13 (1983)
Revard, S.P. “The Design of Nature in Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 17 (1977)
Rogers, P. “Drayton’s Arden and Windsor-Forest.” Papers on Language and Literature 17 (1981)
Schwyzer, P. “Purity and Danger on the West Bank of the Severn: The Cultural Geography of A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634).” Representations 60 (1997)
Simons, C.E.J. “Wordsworth Borrowings from Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.” Notes and Q ueries 50 (2003)
Sisson, C.J. “Drayton, M., Words, ed. by J.W. Hebel, K. Tillotson and B. Newdigate.” Modern Language Review 37 (1942)
Taylor, D., Jr. “Drayton and the Countess of Bedford.” Studies in Philolog y 49 (1952)
Tillotson, K. “Drayton and Richard II: 1597-1600.” The Review of English Studies 15 (1939)
Tillotson, K. “Drayton and the Gooderes.” Modern Language Review 35 (1940)
Van Es, B. “Michael Drayton, Literary History & Historian in Verse.” The Review of English Studies 59 (2008)
Vine, A.. “Michael Drayton and Early Modern Antiquarianism.” PhD diss. Cambridge University, 2005
W., T.H. “Michael Drayton Defended.” Gentleman’s Magazine 56 (1786)
Waldron, F.G. “Michael Drayton.” The Biographical Mirrour. London: Harding, 1795
Weibly, P.S.P. “‘To Any That Will read It’: Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion as Monument, Emblem, and Myth.” PhD diss. University of Texas at Austin, 1982
West, M.D. “Drayton’s To the Virginian Voyage: From Heroic Pastoral to Mock-Heroic.” Renaissance Quarterly 24 (1971)
Whitaker, L. “Michael Drayton as a Dramatist.” PMLA 18 (1903)