When Robert Southwell returned to England in 1586 as an underground missionary priest he brought with him from Italy a new baroque style in prose and poetry that was to prove as influential as it was popular, affecting the styles of Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert among others. The aim of this edition is to provide an easily readable, modernized text of St. Robert’s poems, supported by a thorough account of their textual history and a more complete commentary on their texts than has hitherto been available.