What are the gaps in the early modern archive? How do gender, sexuality and racialisation determine archival absence and presence? Who has access to the early modern archive? Addressing these questions, this collection uses established historical methods and literary analysis to explore the complexity of the archive in early modern research.

Essays highlight archival practice across a range of media including documentary, object, digital and performance. Individual life history is situated as both a tool and a limitation for creating archival records through readings of the rope dancer, Juda Hudson and the figure of the 'Dark Lady' in Shakespeare's sonnets. Case studies of specific objects including a musical organ, photographs of a Victorian Shakespearean tableaux in The Royal Collection and two early modern document-images from the South Carolinian archives provide a route into the colonial and contextual weight which such objects carry. These examples draw out the nuance of what is absent and present in the early modern archive. The volume concludes by considering consent in archival exchanges and the possibility of ethical archival practice in early modern research.

Mel Harrison is Lecturer in Innovative Assessment Practices & Fellow of Higher Education Academy at King's College London, UK.

Erin Julian is Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Roehampton, UK.

Oliver Lewis is Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies at King's College London, UK.