Restoration Politics and Drama: The Plays of Thomas Otway, 1675-1683 offers the first major study of the comedies and tragedies of Thomas Otway, one of England's most significant and influential playwrights, who wrote during a period of political crisis and transformation. His finest tragedies, Caius Marius, The Orphan, and Venice Preserv'd, were produced in response to the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crises that violently divided English political life.

The book refers to a wide range of contemporary texts and also draws on revisionist historical studies that have redrawn the map of the seventeenth century, literary and feminist theories, as well as recent works on Restoration theater and drama. Close readings of Otway's plays also produce wide readings of Restoration literary culture.