"There is much in this book to ponder and Turner calls our attention to how words and concepts change over time, while also demonstrating how important it is to understand the constituent historical elements contributing to this process. . .Turner has produced a fascinating study, even manifesto, for our times."

The Sixteenth Century Journal

“This is a major book by a major scholar. Turner takes up the corporate concept as an artifact of law, science, and literature and studies its transformations and deep impact in the early modern period with an eye to the continued prevalence of corporate thinking and corporate functions today. Breathtakingly ambitious, The Corporate Commonwealth addresses a huge spectrum of English intellectual history with great learning and insight and reminds us that corporations and corporate-like forms take many shapes. A must-read.”

Julia Reinhard Lupton, author of Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life

“The Corporate Commonwealth is an excellent work, one that stands in a present moment that has seen a tremendous increase in the power and scope of corporate forms. Turner devotes extraordinarily careful and nuanced attention to the relationship between individuals and collectivities in the century and a half between More’s Utopia and Hobbes’s Leviathan. This book is truly exhilarating in the way that it makes familiar texts seem fresh and new.”

John O’Brien, author of Literature Incorporated: The Cultural Unconscious of the Business Corporation, 1650–1850

"A magisterial work and significant contribution to what could be described as the New Politicism in Shakespeare studies."

Renaissance Quarterly