This is the first compendious study of the influence of Plato on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers used Platonic ideas and images within their own imaginative work.

Source texts include Plato's Dialogues, and the writings of Neoplatonists and the early Christians who were largely responsible for assimilating Platonic ideas into a Christian culture; and there are essays on more than thirty English authors from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, including Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Iris Murdoch. The book is divided chronologically, showing how every age has reconstructed Platonism to suit its own understanding of the world, and there is a bibliographical guide to further reading.

Established experts and new writers over a range of disciplines have worked together to produce the first comprehensive overview of Platonism in English literature.