This is the first compendious study of the influence of Plato on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers used Platonic ideas and images within their own imaginative work. Established experts and new writers have worked together to produce individual essays on more than thirty English authors, including Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot, Auden and Iris Murdoch; and the book is divided chronologically, showing how every age has reconstructed Platonism to suit its own understanding of the world.