Public opinion in early modern Scotland, c. 1560–1707 by Karin Bowie, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020, viii, 294 pp., £79.99, ISBN 9781108843478 (hbk)

This important book builds on the author’s previous key publications, namely Scottish Public Opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union, 1699–1707 (Woodbridge, 2007), and Addresses against Incorporating Union, 1706–1707 (edited), (Woodbridge, 2018). Along with Thomas Munck, the author edited a special issue of PER – 38(3), (2018), ‘Early modern political petitioning and public engagement in Scotland, Britain and Scandinavia, c. 1550–1795’. This was subsequently published as an edited book by Routledge in 2021, making an important contribution to the growing and recent historiography of petitioning in early modern Britain. These collective influences and the publication history of the author relating to public opinion, petitioning, and detailed work on the 1707 Union are therefore apparent in this detailed research monograph. As a historian primarily of early modern Scotland, it is good to see a Scottish-focused monograph being published in the Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History series.