My research investigates how Middle English popular romances were received, adapted, and sometimes neglected in print during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While recent scholarship has often focused on canonical texts that contain romance motifs, such as The Faerie Queene, the popular fictions that informed these works have been largely overlooked. Furthermore, the early print history of these romances has received limited critical coverage. By examining both the material and textual history of these works, my project aims to understand why certain romances thrived in print while others did not. Combining close literary reading with manuscript and book-historical methods, I explore how Middle English popular romances survived, transformed, and engaged with the shfting cultural, humanist, and reformist landscapes of early modern England. This study addresses a neglected area of literary history, offering the first sustained analysis that situates these romances simultaneously within their material, thematic, and cultural contexts.