Chris R. Kyle, associate professor of history, is the co-editor of Connecting Centre and Locality: Political Communication in Early Modern England, published recently by Manchester University Press. The collection, co-edited by Jason Peacey, a professor of early modern British history at University College London, explores the dynamics of local and national political culture in 17th-century Britain, with an emphasis on political communication.

Authors in the book examine connections between politics in metropolitan centers — London, Whitehall, and Westminster — and politics in localities; and document patterns and processes that served those connections. The collection is intended to serve dialogue between strands in recent historiography, and between the work of social and political historians of Britain’s early modern period. The essays in the book bring together scholarship from some of the most important voices in the field to examine how the center and locality were connected by the circulation of documents, the interactions between national and local officials, and the movement of people throughout England and abroad. Kyle’s contribution to the volume includes the co-edited introduction and an article on the history of Lent in early modern England.

Kyle, who joined Maxwell in 2000, pursues research interests in Tudor and Stuart parliamentary history, lobbying, and political communication in England more broadly. He is the author of Theater of State: Parliament and Political Culture in Early Stuart England, published in 2012 by Stanford University Press; and in 2015 edited a collection of essays on Tudor and Stuart Parliaments, published by John Wiley and Sons. He previously edited two other books, Parliament, Politics and Elections (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and, also with Peacey, Parliament at Work (Boydell and Brewer, 2002). In 2005, he organized a symposium about the Gunpowder Plot at the Folger Shakespeare Library, where he later co-directed an exhibition on the early evolution of English newspapers. He is a past recipient of Syracuse University’s Meredith Teaching Award and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society; and his fellowships include long-term awards by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. He is currently finishing a book on the political culture of early modern England titled The Visible State: Proclamations and Political Communication in Early Modern England.