Elizabethan English

In this novel of alternative history from best-selling author Harry Turtledove, the Spanish Armada has conquered England, King Phillip holds the English throne, and Elizabeth I languishes as a prisoner in the Tower of London. Meanwhile, in London, a mysterious stranger approaches young playwright William Shakespeare with an offer that could change the course of history.

If you want to discover the captivating history of Medieval England and Magna Carta, then get England in the Middle Ages - a set of two books about England during the Middle Ages and the influence of the Magna Carta.

London: a settlement founded by the Romans, occupied by the Saxons, conquered by the Danes and ruled by the Normans. This unremarkable place - not even included in the Domesday Book - became a medieval maze of alleys and courtyards, later to be chequered with grand estates of Georgian splendour. It swelled with industry and became the centre of the largest empire in history. And rising from the rubble of the Blitz, it is now one of the greatest cities in the world.

Acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald delivers a stunning account of Elizabeth I that focuses on her role in the Wars of Religion - the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism that tore Europe apart in the sixteenth century. Elizabeth’s 1558 coronation procession was met with an extravagant outpouring of love. Only 25 years old, the young queen saw herself as the nation’s Protestant savior, aiming to provide new hope, prosperity, and independence from the foreign influence that had plagued her sister Mary’s reign. Given the scars of the Reformation, Elizabeth would need all of the powers of diplomacy and tact she could summon.

Some 70 years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed the world's first joint-stock company. Back then, in the mid-16th century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe. Struggling with a single export - woolen cloth - the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners. As this absorbing account shows, innovation and risk-taking were at the heart of the settlement of America, as was the profit motive.

In the final days of World War II, Catherine Hastings meets the man she wants to marry. Flight surgeon Jonathan Brandon isn't just handsome - he's everything Catherine could hope for in her betrothed. But her dream of a happily ever after is shattered when Jonnie vanishes before their wedding, leaving Catherine bereft, broken-hearted, and with a lifetime of unanswered questions.

It is the early 1600s and the City of London sees Queen Elizabeth living out her dying days as Scottish King James waits in the wings to take to the throne. Meanwhile, in Southwark, along the south bank of the River Thames, Master Hardy Drew, Constable of the Bankside Watch, maintains law and order amongst the cut-throats and smugglers, in the taverns and brothels, as well as with the gentlefolk, who flock across the river to enjoy the latest plays by Shakespeare and Jonson.

Grace O'Malley, daughter of a clan chief in the far west of Ireland, went from marriage at fifteen to piracy on the high seas. She soon had a fleet of galleys under her commander, but her three decades of plundering, kidnapping, murder and mayhem came to a close in 1586, when she was captured and sentenced to hang. Saved from the scaffold by none other than Queen Elizabeth herself—another powerful woman in a man's world—Grace's life took another extraordinary turn, when it was rumored she had become intelligencer for the queen's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, is one of the most intriguing men of the Elizabethan period. Tall and handsome, he soon becomes a ‘favorite’ at court, so close to the queen many wonder if they are lovers. The truth is far more complex, as each has what the other yearns for. Robert Devereux longs for recognition, wealth and influence. His flamboyant naïveté amuses the ageing Queen Elizabeth, like the son she never had, and his vitality makes her feel young.

Lady Penelope Rich is one of the most beautiful and sought-after women in Elizabethan England. The daughter of the Earl of Essex, she is married to the wealthy Baron Robert Rich. Penelope's life is full of love and scandal. The inspiration for Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet "Astrophel and Stella", she is involved in the Essex Rebellion. A complex and fascinating woman, her life is a story of love, betrayal, and tragedy.

1564: Devon sailor Francis Drake sets out on a journey of adventure. Drake learns of routes used to transport Spanish silver and gold, and risks his life in an audacious plan to steal a fortune.

Jack and Annie are whisked back to Elizabethan England where they meet the Bard of Avon himself, William Shakespeare, and luckily for them, he is desperate for two small actors for his latest play! An exciting adventure and a wonderful introduction to Shakespeare.

The Tudors are England's most notorious royal family. But, as Leanda de Lisle's gripping new history reveals, they are a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family's obscure Welsh origins and the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a queen's lap - and later her bed.

Why did Henry VIII marry six times? Why did Anne Boleyn have to die? Why did Elizabeth I's courtiers hail her as a goddess come to earth? The dramas of courtly love have captivated centuries of readers and dreamers. Yet too often they're dismissed as something existing only in books and song—those old legends of King Arthur and chivalric fantasy. Not so. In this ground-breaking history, Sarah Gristwood reveals the way courtly love made and marred the Tudor dynasty.

The day Rodney Hawkhurst rides onto her father's grand estate, Lizbeth Gillingham is a wild eighteen-year-old, with tangled red hair, dirt on her apron, and an archer's bow in her hand. A chance encounter leads to a clandestine kiss, leaving the tomboy Lizbeth wondering if the life of a sophisticated lady could be so bad if she was on the arm of Rodney Hawkhurst... But Rodney has not come to see Sir Gillingham about Lizbeth. He has come to borrow money for a daring sea voyage, and to ask for the hand of Phillida, Lizbeth's elegant sister.

As Maureen Quilligan wrote in The New York Times Book Review of The First Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn "was a real victim of the sexual scandals her brilliant daughter escaped, and a subject Ms. Erickson's sensitivity to sexual and political nuance should well serve." Indeed, Carolly Erickson could have chosen no more fascinating and appropriate a subject. Alluring and profoundly enigmatic, Anne Boleyn has eluded the grasp of historians for centuries.

Elizabethan Demonology: An Essay in Illustration of the Belief in the Existence of Devils, and the Powers Possessed By Them, as It Was Generally Held during the Period of the Reformation, and the Times Immediately Succeeding; with Special Reference to Shakespeare and His Works This Essay is an expansion, in accordance with a preconceived scheme, of two papers, one on The Witches in Macbeth, and the other on The Demonology of Shakespeare, which were read before the New Shakespeare Society in the years 1877 and 1878.

Britain's most esteemed scholar of 16th and 17th century literature, Frank Kermode is also a noted author and professor. In this Modern Library Chronicle, he uses the context of the Elizabethan Era to link each of Shakespeare's plays to their probable years of creation. By portraying the bard's England in terms of its society, economy, and arts, Kermode provides an invaluable guide to understanding Shakespeare?s works.

What is the mind? How does it relate to the body and soul? These questions were as perplexing for the Elizabethans as they are for us today—although their answers were often startlingly different. Shakespeare and his contemporaries believed the mind was governed by the humors and passions, and was susceptible to the Devil’s interference. In this insightful and wide-ranging account, Helen Hackett explores the intricacies of Elizabethan ideas about the mind.

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realized portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, his advisors Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, his wives Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the age, Holbein was a multifaceted genius: a humanist, satirist, and political propagandist, and a deft man whose work was rich in layers of symbolism and allusion.