Read of the Week

Good morning Anne aficionados! Last night I finished up Alison Weir's The Life of Elizabeth I. I really enjoyed this book, Weir wrote a biography emphasizing the personal life of Elizabeth using a vast cache of primary sources including letters, government documents and journals. The reader finds out almost immediately that Elizabeth's need to marry is of the utmost concern, not just to her advisors and subjects but to the entire European marriage market.. Princes from all over continent wanted to marry for a variety of reasons and Elizabeth kept them on a string, guessing whether or not she would accept their offers and playing them against each other for the benefit of England. There was even intrigue among her highest nobility pressing their offers for her hand. Despite the continual urging of her closest friends and advisors to marry and produce "...heirs of her body..." the self styled Virgin Queen professes herself married to her country and her people; a bold statement for a woman who lived in a time when most believed that a woman could not survive without a husband.

 Outside of Elizabeth's matrimonial quandaries, Weir gave such great detail on who Elizabeth was, breaking the mold of Gloriana to explore the importance of symbolism, faith and relationships to Elizabeth's life. Alison gives us a ton of information on the Robert Dudley/Elizabeth relationship and how it changed and developed over time. The author was great about digging into Elizabeth's personal life, but the one subject I wish she would have spent more time on is Elizabeth's intellectual pursuits and how she encouraged and promoted education; it would become a hallmark of her reign.

I would however point out a few sections that I struggled with, namely Weir's assertion that Amy Dudley was murdered. The point seems small, considering the epic life of Elizabeth I, but the ways in which the author tried to justify herself seemed out of place given the normally meticulous research of Alison Weir. The author asserts that the person who may have murdered Amy Dudley is William Cecil. She spend many pages describing how he may [emphasis mine] have set the scene to frame Dudley for her murder ensuring that people were suspicious prior to her untimely death and that these suspicions meant Elizabeth would never marry Robert, leaving Cecil's influence over Elizabeth and her regime intact.

 While I enjoyed the depth of Weir's research, it really bothered me that she would quote primary source documents and other contemporary sources without using footnotes or endnotes. I am always looking for books to use in my research but Weir's lack of citations makes it extremely difficult to locate just where she is getting her information from.

This book is an excellent introductory biography for any historian or reader hoping to grapple with the grandeur of the Elizabethan era. Weir's grasp of making historical narrative come to life shines in her writing.

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