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Bloomsbury Trade snaps up Das' new history of Renaissance Britain
Bloomsbury Trade has snapped up a new history of Renaissance Britain from Nandini Das, professor of early modern literature and culture at the University of Oxford.
Jasmine Horsey, editorial director for non-fiction, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to This Little World: The Biography of a Nation from James Pullen at the Wylie Agency in an exclusive submission.
The book, which will be published in spring 2026, is a history of 16th and 17th-century England that "seeks to challenge the narrative of ruffs and gowns, kings and queens that is so often told about this period".
The synopsis said: "As Das will argue in a book spanning 150 years, from the court of Henry VIII through to Cromwell’s Protectorate, a certain idea of England as a country ‘in splendid isolation’ was defined during this time. This Little World counters this by offering a sweeping biography of a country on the cusp of nationhood and empire, from the perspective of the people coming and going across its borders.
"From itinerants and spies, portraitists and pirates, merchants and artisans, the book will introduce readers to figures like Levina Teerlinc, probably the only painter to be employed by not one but four Tudor monarchs; Elizabeth Key, daughter of an enslaved African mother and white settler father in Virginia who successfully claimed English citizenship for herself and her son; and the Portuguese-Sephardic Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, the first Jew to be granted denizen status in England."
Das regularly presents radio and television programmes, including "Tales of Tudor Travel: The Explorer’s Handbook" on BBC 4. Her previous book, Courting India, was published by Bloomsbury in March this year.
Das said: “The story of England in the 16th and 17th centuries is a story of movement, one through which some of the most fundamental English ideas – about nationhood and identity, about faith and race, about belonging and difference – first took shape.”
Horsey added: "With Courting India Das focused on four years of history; now she turns her talents to 150 years, overturning the conventional understanding of Britain at this time in a narrative packed with life and character."
