Ground-work: English Renaissance literature and soil science

Introduction : toward a Renaissance soil science / Hillary Eklund

Compost/composition / Frances E. Dolan

Richard Carew and the matters of the littoral / Tamsin Badcoe

Visions of soil and body management : the almanac in Richard II / Bonnie Lander Johnson

Unsoiled soil and "fleshly slime" : representations of reproduction in Spenser's legend of chastity / Lindsay Ann Reid

Groping Golgotha : soil improvement in the Towneley and Chester Shepherds' plays / Rob Wakeman

Winstanley and postrevolutionary soil / Keith M. Botelho

Fertility versus firepower : Shakespeare's contested soil ecologies / Randall Martin

Wetlands reclamation and the fate of the local in seventeenth century England / Hillary Eklund

Manuring Eden : biological conversions in Paradise lost / David B. Goldstein

Afterword / Sharon O'Dair.