James VI of Scotland and I of England participated in the burgeoning literary culture of the Renaissance not only as a monarch and patron but as an author in his own right publishing extensively in a number of different genres over four decades. As the first monograph devoted to James as an author this book offers a fresh perspective on his reigns in Scotland and England and also on the interrelationship of authorship and authority literature and politics in the Renaissance. Beginning with the poetry he wrote in Scotland in the 1580s it moves through a wide range of his writings in other genres including scriptural exegeses political social and theological treatises and printed speeches concluding with his manuscript poetry of the early 1620s.