Elizabeth and Essex

by Lytton Strachey

One of the most famous and baffling romances in history-between Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex-began in May of 1587, when she was fifty-three and he was just shy of twenty. Their relationship continued until 1601, when the Earl of Essex was beheaded for treason. And, in a succession of brilliant scenes, Strachey portrays the Queen's and the Earl's compelling attraction for on another, their impassioned disagreements, and their mutual contest for power, which led to a final, tragic confrontation. Here we also have superb portraits of influential people of the time: Francis Bacon, Robert Cecil, Walter Raleigh, and other figures of the court who struggled to assert themselves in a kingdom that was primarily defined by her sovereign, and so now seen through history's lens as Elizabethan England.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, British Literature, Tudor Period, Biography Memoir, Historical

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His 1921 biography Queen Victoria was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Reviews

[David Sarkies · Rating 3 out of 5]

The romantic tragedy of the Virgin Queen
14 June 2012

This is not an historical text book per se but rather the story of the relationship between the Earl of Essex and Queen Elizabeth I that rings like a romantic tragedy. It is difficult to tell the accuracy of many of the accounts in this book namely because Strachey does not source it in the traditional sense. In fact I am not sure of when modern books began to reference their material (and many of the factual novels that are released these days include references, and even footnotes on the more obscure references in the text). Mind you, having references is actually quite helpful, particularly when you wish to explore the subject further.

I was never really aware that Queen Elizabeth had any romantic relationships and it is suggested (including in this book) that she was unable to have sex because of a physical deformity. I am not entirely sure of the accuracy of this because I am doubtful that Elizabeth would have had a tell all attitude. In fact she comes across as the type of leader that would hold her cards very close to her chest and was reluctant to reveal any weaknesses in her character. We must remember that Elizabeth was a woman doing a man's job in a man's world, and no doubt there were a lot of conservatives around that would baulk at the idea of a woman on the throne.

England was actually quite an unusual country for Western Europe because there was generally no issue with a woman on the throne. Elizabeth wasn't the first, and definitely not the last, however from memory I do not really recall any sole female rulers prior to Queen Mary (Elizabeth's sister). The same system operated in Scotland (which was independent of England at the time). It should further be noted that a female monarch would assume her position on the throne if the woman was the next in line (it is unclear whether a younger male would succeed her, but in both Mary and Elizabeth's case, there wasn't one).

I have always admired Queen Elizabeth not simply for being a woman doing a man's job but for doing it quite well. When we look back at that period of English history we almost see an England that is coming in on its own. Elizabeth was sympathetic towards the idea of a national church, however wasn't willing to go as far as some of the radical reformers wanted (and this happened during the English civil war and the period of the republic afterwards). In a way she was satisfied with the split from the Catholic Church (which was the opposite of her predecessor) however was satisfied with not going much further than her father Henry.

We also see under Elizabeth a flowering of English literature. Many of the great names of the English renaissance appeared during Elizabeth's reign, people such as John Donne, Kit Marlowe, Edmund Spencer, and of course William Shakespeare. That is not to say that this was the high point of English literature since there were more to come during the 17th century with poets such as John Milton, John Bunyan, and Thomas Hobbes, but we can clearly see that Elizabeth brought about the completion of England's movement from its medieval past and into the modern age.

Elizabeth had her fair share of battles and struggles, particularly early on in life where she was imprisoned and almost executed by her sister, but also during her reign. Her support of the English reformation meant that she had made enemies both at home and abroad, though many of the local enemies, particularly those connected to the church, were forced to flee to the continent. However, we cannot forget Mary Queen of Scots, who spent much of her later life imprisoned in numerous castles around the country, only to be executed for fear of undermining her aunt's reign. Then there is the case of the Spanish Armada, which one suggests that England was lucky to defeat. However, the defeat was not a touch and go one but pretty much a decisive victory. After a battle that England was expected to lose, the Armada pretty much turned around (namely by encircling England) and limped back home. Many of the ships that survived the battle were lost on the circuitous route home.

I find English history to be fascinating and I find the life of Queen Elizabeth just as fascinating. It is a shame that I have not yet seen the two movies that were made about her, and I think I should make an effort the next time I am in the video store to locate them, hire them, and watch them.

[Plateresca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't expect to enjoy a history book this much! 'Elizabeth and Essex' must be the most beautifully written non-fiction I've ever read. The authour is praised for his deep understanding of the characters, and his quiet sense of humour is absolutely irresistible. This is definitely among the best books I've read this year. An exquisite page-turner.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the edition I read.

This read more like fiction than history, but the writing was terrific. I really enjoyed this and would recommend it to Tudor fans.

[Matrakcsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the Elizabethean-era, or the privatelife of Queen Elizabeth I.

[C.S. Burrough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though not everyone's favourite book of this period, this retains its genre's benchmark status.

Once considered the definitive piece after its 1928 release, it has in more recent times been superseded by works of academics and aficionados with the advantage of modern research methodologies.

Yet this vital contribution by a master wordsmith in a class of his own cannot be overlooked by today's Elizabethan history buffs.

Perhaps Lytton Strachey never intended Elizabeth and Essex as primarily a detailed documentation of this turbulent royal liaison. He was, first and foremost, a supreme storyteller.

A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and founding member of the influential Bloomsbury Group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists, Strachey notably established a new form of biography that saw empathy and personal insight meet wit and irreverence.

He was influenced by Dostoyevsky, whose novels Strachey read and reviewed. Similarly, Sigmund Freud's influence over Strachey's work, particularly in Elizabeth and Essex, has been commonly noted.

Whilst not to everyone's stylistic taste and lacking the 'popular' appeal of more recent Tudor histories, this retains an important place in its genre. I suspected my Elizabethan history reading incomplete before consuming this and on finishing it saw why.

Though I might never have been bought this thoughtful gift from someone dear, I was, and it undoubtedly broadened my literary scope. Having since read dozens of fine historical biographies, I still honour this with pride of place on my shelf.

[Melodie Roschman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brief flashes of humor, but I'm astounded by the way that Strachey managed to take such an interesting period in history and make it so boring. I want to read this story as told by someone like Philippa Gregory. Don't promise me star-crossed, dramatic historical romance and then give me endless lists of Earls and their letters to each other. 2.5 stars.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm in a Lytton Strachey phase right now. I liked reading his take on Elizabeth--it's very gossipy. In this, the queen resembles Miranda Richardson's character in Black Adder more than the usual Elizabeth we see in films/documentaries. Fun.

[Nic Rowan]

On Ireland:

The strange air engulfed him. The strange land charming, savage, mythical lured him on with indulgent ease. He moved, triumphant, through a new peculiar universe of the unimagined and the unreal. Who or what were these people, with their mantles and their nakedness, their long locks of hair hanging over their faces, their wild battle-cries and gruesome wailings, their kerns and their gallowglas, their jesters and their bards? Who were their ancestors? Scythians? Or Spaniards? Or Gauls? What state of society was this, where chiefs jostled with gypsies, where ragged women lay all day long laughing in the hedgerows, where ragged men gambled away among each other their very rags, their very forelocks, the very ... parts more precious still, where wizards flew on whirlwinds, and rats were rhymed into dissolution? All was vague, contradictory, and unaccountable; and the Lord Deputy, advancing further and further into the green wilderness, began like so many others before and after him to catch the surrounding infection, to lose the solid sense of things, and to grow confused over what was fancy and what was fact.

[Helen]

I was lucky enough to discover this special armed services edition from the Second World War of “Elizabeth and Essex” and was eager to dive in to this little piece of history. At the beginning it reads more like a gossip column and was showing its age in some of the words and style of language used, but for me it still worked and was quite a refreshing change. The pacing isn’t the best either but I chose to think of this as more of a novelistic approach to the historical events it was describing as opposed to the non-fiction it was sold to be and that made it more enjoyable. It certainly doesn’t read like traditional nonfiction. Despite knowing the history of Elizabeth and Lord Sussex already, it still had such a way of building tension that I was still almost taken by surprise when the events unfolded as they did (not giving any spoilers just in case anyone doesn’t know this part of Elizabethan history!). Overall I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t reread this account again and I’m not sure if all of the sources the author used can be now considered credible. For that reason I’ve gone for 3.5 stars.

[Ellen Kolb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strachey's account of the tumultuous relationship between Britain's Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex is pithy, witty, erudite and yet accessible. I'd read this again for the elegant writing alone. The story of events four centuries in the past remains absorbing, and Strachey recounts it vividly. Lytton Strachey's name is probably better known than his books to today's readers, thanks to his association with Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group. This excellent volume is a fine introduction to a writer who deserves to be considered on his own merits.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1586764.html

A short (180 pages) but colourful account of the relationship in the 1590s between Elizabeth I and the second Earl of Essex, which ended with his execution in 1601. No footnotes or much sourcing at all, which makes one a bit suspicious of its historical accuracy, though it is told in suitably dramatic terms. I knew the basics already, but Strachey catches our attention by portraying a court struggle between Cecil (the younger son of Lord Burghley, who founded the Salisbury dynasty) and Essex's supporters, with Francis Bacon playing a key role ny switching sides and ensuring Essex's doom; the queen then dies of a broken heart. I had not realised that Essex was actually the great-grandson of the "other Boleyn girl", Anne's sister Mary - indeed his grandmother was quite possibly her daughter by Henry VIII, making him the queen's great-nephew. It also hadn't occurred to me that he was much the most prominent courtier ever to be made Lord Deputy or Lord Lieutenant of Ireland - I had vaguely assumed that his father had held the post at some point before his horrible death, but I was wrong. The involvement of William Shakespeare in the whole thing is interesting but incidental (and anyway covered better by Shapiro).

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the first three chapters, I had serious doubts:
1. Taken as history, this reads as...dated. Also, no footnotes. Few quotations.
2. The pacing at the very beginning seemed off, both too quick and too slow.

HOWEVER. I shifted to thinking of this more as historical fiction that majors on the historical and minors on the fiction (novelistic history?), rather like "I Claudius," which is, I think, a more fitting genre judgment. Also, I didn't have any idea what was actually going to happen (I'm weak on the Elizabethans, apparently), and so the suspense built dramatically and the ending was a very effective punch in the gut.

In the end, surprising myself, I highly recommend it. I would like to read something on the topic more academic, which is a good sign.

[Kasia (Kącik z książką) · Rating 4 out of 5]

To niezwykła, napisana z kunsztem biografia monarchini skupiająca się na okresie jej życia po rozgromieniu hiszpańskiej Armady i pojawieniu się u jej boku Roberta Devereux. To jednocześnie doskonała lekcja historii Anglii drugiej połowy XVI wieku. Lytton Strachey, angielski pisarz i krytyk, pieczołowicie odmalowuje przed oczami czytelnika nie tylko ówczesne wydarzenia, ale też uzupełnia je obrazem uczuć i emocji ich bohaterów, bazując na kronikach i licznie zachowanych listach.


Cała opinia:
http://www.kacikzksiazka.pl/2021/05/e...

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, though it can read like a gossip tabloid! Written several decades ago, the language is not so modern and can be a little difficult to follow. I learned a dozen new words, lol.
This is a valuable read though because the author still uses much of the correspondence and saved records of these two and of the court witnesses.

[Chiefdonkey Bradey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The doomed headstrong earl - the wounded Queen - the serpent Francis Bacon - the subtle Master Secretary - their story told in beautiful sinuous prose

[Teaspoon Stories · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lytton Strachey was transformed for me from dreary high-minded intellectual into fallible flesh and blood when - in the 1995 Bloomsbury film “Carrington” - he saucily selects a cab outside a railway station based on the driver’s virile charms.

So it’s perhaps not surprising that Strachey should have felt himself deeply attracted to the Elizabethan Age with its lusty passions and melodramatic extravagances.

His example of the bemusing contradictions of the Elizabethan Age - “their delicacy and their brutality, their piety and their lust” - is viscerally sensual as he describes “those iron-nerved beings who passed with rapture from some divine madrigal sung to a lute by a bewitching boy in a tavern to the spectacle of mauled dogs tearing a bear to pieces” (p9). I think we can safely guess which of the two spectacles Strachey yearns for.

His account of one of the most famous and fraught relationships in history was hugely popular and went through edition after edition. It was the mainstream version of this bit of history for decades, although a century on, it may now seem dull and dusty.

And yet I think there’s something modern and subversive hiding in plain sight in the text. The work seems to me to be full of suggestion and ambivalence. There are queer goings on and more to things than meet the eye:

- “The flaunting man of fashion, whose codpiece proclaimed an astonishing virility, was he not also, with his flowing hair and his jewelled ears, effeminate?” (p9).

- “A group of handsome young men he kept about him, half servants and half companions, and he found in their equivocal society an unexpected satisfaction” (p51).

- “He threw over Henry and Perez with gay insouciance” (p97).

- “A liaison sprang up, one of those indisputable and yet ambiguous connections which are at once recognised and ignored by society” (p180).

The relationship between Elizabeth and Essex - unorthodox, ecstatic, toxic and destructive - also seems to be very much capable of being read as code for any number of forbidden or impossible loves.

There’s something subversive going on in Lytton Strachey’s style of writing as well, I think. The prose may initially seem heavy-going, florid and abstruse by today’s style of writing - with extraordinary words like “apophthegm” (p18), “quiddity” (p116) and “euphuistic” (p93, which rather aptly means showy and affected).

But there’s also a vein of dark humour and grotesque:

- “While we search in vain to solve the mystery of great men’s souls and the strange desires of Princes, the fate of Mr Booth’s ears [cut of in a miscarriage of justice] also remains for ever concealed from us” (p65).

As well as lots of waspish humour and mischievous irony:

- “He had left a rich widow - young and eligible; to marry her would be an excellent cure for that disease from which he was suffering - consumption of the purse” (p131).

- “His father, Charles the Fifth, had been welcomed into Heaven, when he died; there could be no mistake about it; Titian had painted the scene” (p136).

Finally, some fascinating accidental facts I discovered reading the novel:

- A passenger aboard Essex’s ship which was almost lost in a storm on a failed mission to destroy the Spanish fleet was a certain John Donne - who “out of the violence and disruption of a storm at sea made a poem - a poem written in a new style and a new movement, harsh, modern, filled with realistic metaphor and intricate wit” (p139).

- Queen Elizabeth had some three thousand gowns stored in the royal wardrobes.

- A library of valuable books seized by Essex in a raid on a Portuguese cathedral city was given to his friend Thomas Bodley and “was the curious beginning of the great Library that bears his name” (p115).

- In criminal cases brought by the Crown in the 16th century the accused had no right to defence counsel. It really didn’t make any difference anyway, as “a State trial was little more than a dramatic formality. The verdict was determined beforehand by the administration, and everyone concerned was well aware that this was so” (p245).

[James Askari · Rating 3 out of 5]

A work in which Strachey exercises his considerable talents as a prosateur; and it's not hard to see the story as a highly-coloured backdrop for his play of judgment, to some degree, but chiefly style. The account settles down into a chronological history of Essex's eleven years at court--his displeasure at Raleigh, his senior and infinite superior in military judgment and confirmed purpose; his growing into favouritism and intimacy with the virgin Elizabeth, who, at sixty-three, has passions but has lived moved by an adolescent revulsion from sex; the Don Lopez affair, prosecuted too hotly but not insincerely by Essex; the Cadiz campaign (where he earns glory through Raleigh's restraint); the fiasco of the Ferrol expedition; Essex's abortive and ambiguous campaign in Ireland; his wild arrival at court, making a show of menacing the Queen's person; and, finally, his bathetic and questionable rebellion, riding out into the City hoping to gather a popular following, only to be hounded back by river to his house. Strachey supposes that unlike Essex's friend and protege, the perpetually disappointed Francis Bacon, Essex lives in an inconstancy of contrary feelings, buffeted back and forth between pride, hot-headedness, devotion and Christian self-abnegation. He is not a rebel, or is at least subject to 'intervals of romantic fidelity and noble remorse'.

The most fascinating cast member in Strachey's impressionistic narrative history is Elizabeth, whose policy of endless deferrals and reversals, exploiting the perception of female weakness, conceals a core of steel. Mary Queen of Scots only learns how wrong she was to despise her cousin on the scaffold. For Strachey, Elizabeth, fluent in six languages, with all the acquirements of a prince, is content to palter on the Reformation for thirty years in order to be the leader of England's Renaissance. The best part of the book for me is the most purely fantastic, the harping on the spirit of the Renaissance, the nature of the Reformation, Elizabeth's character, contradictions between the structure and ornament of the baroque. These reflections on 'the bewildering discordance between the real and the apparent' are too abstract, perhaps too literary or broadly drawn, to carry any weight as historiography; they work best as a fantasia, or the outline of a theory of Elizabeth's strategic 'pusillanimity' that secures the kingdom for forty years and incubates a modern culture.

[Desislava · Rating 3 out of 5]

Елизабет I никога не е била сред любимите ми владетели. И въпреки всичко тя е много интригуваща и интересна историчека личност.
Около нея има много тайни и мистерии, историята й трябва да се знае и да бъде прочетена.
Тя управлява около 60 години и по нейно време Великобритания достига огромен разцвет.
Пълна ирония е, че въпреки копнежът за наследник и толкова обезглавените кралици, екзекуции, големите промени, короната на Тюдорите минава в ръцете на жена и техният род, за чието оцеляване и оставане на трона са положени огромни усилия, този велик род приключва с нея.
С Елизабет - червенокосата дъщеря на Ан Болейн, но и Велика Кралица.
Тази книга обаче не е написана добре.
Скучна е. Тромава, безинтересна. Историята е сухо поднесена, за разлика от другата книга на авторката за Кралица Виктория.
Повече е като биография, като научно четиво.
В което няма нищо лошо. Просто не е увлекателно написана, чете се тридно, не е интересна.
Зарязах малко преди краят.
Давам й 3 звезди, заради историческите факти и това, което научих.

[Paul Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite where Strachey got his quotes I cannot imagine. The narrative is at times a little laboured and it is occassionally difficult to put it into the historic context of a monarch who has been excommunicated and is under constant threat of Spanish invasion. Were Essex and Elizabeth so obssessed with one another? Incredible.

[Laurie Byro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have written about Lytton Strachey and Carrington etc in my Bloomsberries books, and couldn't wait to find this HARD to find book he had written. It's well done, very "People Magazine" gossipy but at the same time respectful. Really enjoyed it. Lytton may have been a rascal, but the man could write.

[Tristan Kraatz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book promises a juicy historical romance between a queen and her favorite. While the drama is there, it feels more like gossip than real history. Strachey focuses on scandalous rumors and snarky remarks, leaving you with a shallow understanding of both Elizabeth and Essex. If you're looking for real historical depth, this book won't give you the crown jewels.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 4 out of 5]

History halfway to the novel; Strachey is concerned with the mental states that affect the actions of his well-defined characters, which necessarily involves more speculation than a conscientious historian would permit. Engaging and informative, nonetheless.

[Red · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

Nie było to nic odkrywczego, czego bym nie wiedziała po zajęciach z kulturówki na studiach, aczkolwiek nigdy nie odmówię sobie niczego, jeśli chodzi o Elżbietę czy w ogóle ten czas w historii Anglii.

[Balde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente crónica de la relación tóxica de la pusilánime Isabel I de Inglaterra y el ambicioso conde de Essex en la que él, en su soberbia, nunca llegó a aceptar que no dominaba a la reina, llevándole, como si se tratase de una pareja maltratadora, a intentar acabar con ella, lo que le llevó a su propio final.

[Rodrigo Zavala Molina · Rating 3 out of 5]

¿Apasionado por la Monarquía inglesa? ¿Apasionado por la Reina Isabel Tudor? Este libro ayuda a entender un poco su lado humano.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fun. Part history and part love story. Highly recommend.

[Avie Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

somewhat hard to get into. funny at times. i feel like the author kind of wanted to write a book about francis bacon but i don’t really give a shit about him so..

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

So dry

[Dominika · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️
Liczyłam, że będzie więcej o Elżbiecie.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between the heavy-handed barbarity of the Middle Ages and the self-aware ratiocination of the Enlightenment lies the Elizabethan Age, full of subtle thinking and dueling allegiance to passion and to self-rule. Strachey illuminates the contradictions and the drama of the time with wit, erudition and brilliant writing. Essex is a charming yet clueless underage hero of Elizabeth's heart, whose male pride and sulking led him to wander into treason. Elizabeth's youthful lessons of isolation, power and survival left her with an appetite for affection but a deep fear and loathing of vulnerability. It played out in a recycling of her parents' romance, political mistrust and beheading. Villains of the piece are the calculating climbers, Secretary Robert Cecil and lawyer Francis Bacon.

As history, and psychological biography, it is a compelling story.