The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Cultural Achievement

by A.L. Rowse

In The Cultural Achievement, Mr. Rowse chronicles the astonishingly rich cultural flowering that marked the reign of Elizabeth I. He brings vividly to life the age's poetry, painting, sculpture, minor arts, and, above all, the tightly knit world of the theatre, in which a community of playwrights and actors worked with and sometimes against each other. He devotes individual chapters to the masters of Elizabethan music: Byrd, Dowland, Weelkes, Gibbons, and their followers, and to the science of the English Renaissance, with discussions of Gilbert's great work on magnetism and Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood.

Genres: History, Shakespeare, Nonfiction, Tudor Period

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Alfred Leslie Rowse, CH FBA, known professionally as A. L. Rowse and to his friends and family as Leslie, was a prolific Cornish historian. He is perhaps best known for his poetry about Cornwall and his work on Elizabethan England. He was also a Shakespearean scholar and biographer. He developed a widespread reputation for irascibility and intellectual arrogance.

One of Rowse's great enthusiasms was collecting books, and he owned many first editions, many of them bearing his acerbic annotations. For example, his copy of the January 1924 edition of The Adelphi magazine edited by John Middleton Murry bears a pencilled note after Murry's poem In Memory of Katherine Mansfield: 'Sentimental gush on the part of JMM. And a bad poem. A.L.R.'

Upon his death in 1997 he bequeathed his book collection to the University of Exeter, and his personal archive of manuscripts, diaries, and correspondence. In 1998 the University Librarian selected about sixty books from Rowse’s own working library and a complete set of his published books. The Royal Institution of Cornwall selected some of the remaining books, and the rest were sold to dealers.

Reviews

[John Ollerton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A L Rowse is a giant of history but very opinionated and there is a pomposity in the book, also he expects a level of background knowledge in as much as he drops in a character but does not explain who the person is. Some great insights though such as who Miss Moffet was or the intransigence of the Jesuits versus the secular Catholic clergy.

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Literature section: dense but interesting.

Music section: too long! Too many madrigals.