This volume explores practices of secrecy and surveillance in medieval and early modern England. The ten contributions by Swiss and international scholars address in particular the intersections of secrecy and surveillance with gender and identity, public and private spheres, religious practices, and power structures. Considering a wide range of English literary texts from Old English riddles to the Book of Margery Kempe and the plays and poems of Shakespeare, they seek to contribute to the much-needed historicisation of the practices of secrecy, exclusion and disclosure.