In Defiance of Time contends that the antiquarian project, integral to early modern literary and intellectual culture, depended on the antiquaries' capacity to restore - in their imagination at least - the fragments of the past. It offers original readings of important authors such as Leland, Stow, Spenser, Camden, Drayton, and Selden. This is a book that demands and deserves close reading. Its rewards are in the details ... and in the freshness of observation which Vine brings to his task. Its scholarship and its range of reference are impressive; its style is engaging and assured. Much valuable material from manuscript sources is added to our knowledge of the subject. The antiquarian imagination is working at full power here.