217 comptes rendus Tyler, Margaret. Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood. Ed. Joyce Boro. Tudor & Stuart Translations 11. Cambridge, UK: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2014. Pp. ix, 279. ISBN 978-1-907322-16-7 (hardcover) US$44.99. Te genre of “romance” in early modern Europe encompasses a broad category of literature containing verse and prose, and a wide variety of subjects. In English, romance literature has long been divided between highbrow verse and lowbrow prose. Tis distinction has been handed down from sixteenth-century critics and has meant that the verses of poets like Sydney, Spenser, and Shakespeare have received far more scholarly attention than the prose works of Greene, Nash, and Heywood. All of these works contain sexuality and violence, but in verse romance they emphasize notions of chivalry and honour for the social elites; in prose romance, sex and violence tended to be used in a more salacious manner and were meant for proletarian consumption. Te verse-prose divide, as de- scribed, was not universal to Europe; for example, Iberian prose romance had a much higher status and engaged in portrayals of honour and nobility. However, the divide in English literature has proved tenacious, and prose romance has remained a lesser cousin to verse romance, at least until recently. Margaret Tyler’s Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood, frst published in 1578, is a translation of Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra’s Espejo’s prose romance de príncipes y cavalleros (1562). It is a tale of knights on honourable quests in far of lands, and slaying giants by the score. Tyler’s work focuses on the elite topics of knighthood and honour, but, being a work of prose has, until recently, been overlooked in English scholarship. Tyler’s work has also been tainted by a disdain held by modern scholars for works of translation. Nevertheless, the Mirror is a notable work of Elizabethan literature for two reasons: it was the frst romance of the Iberian tradition to be translated into English, and, more signifcantly, it is a very early example of a woman’s work on a secular topic published in England. Tyler’s book has thus generated considerable interest from scholars in recent decades. For example, there were three diferent editions of the Mirror published between 1997 and 2001. Joyce Boro’s critical edition published in 2014 will naturally elicit the question of whether another edition of such a frequently published work is needed. Te answer is an unqualifed yes. Boro’s introduction does a fne job of summarizing the previous ffeen years of intense scholarly