ABSTRACT
This chapter presents John Derricke's Image of Ireland, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne, is perhaps the most dramatic example of the interconnection between history writing and artistic representation in an English book from the sixteenth-century. The book's complexity reflects not only its appearance at the high point of sixteenth-century illustrated book production in England, but also the complicated position that Ireland and Irish culture occupied in English policy at the end of the 1570s. Derricke's Image of Ireland reflects not only the complicated position that Ireland and Irish culture occupied in English policy at the end of the 1570s but also its publication at a pivotal moment in sixteenth-century illustrated book production and image making in England. Derricke's poem is divided into two main parts, followed by three verse monologues. For Derricke, emphasizing the lure of the Irish frontier had the additional benefit of minimizing the strategic importance of Ireland as an English military position.
