Queen Elizabeth I

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Standard Name: Elizabeth I, Queen
Birth Name: Elizabeth Tudor
Royal Name: Elizabeth I
QEI was a scholar by training and inclination (who wrote translations both as learning exercises and for recreation), as well as a writer in many genres and several languages. As monarch she wrote speeches, and all her life she wrote letters, poems, and prayers. (Some of these categories occasionally overlap.) Once her writing moved beyond the dutifulness of her youth, she had a pungent and forceful style both in prose and poetry.
Full-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, by the school of Nicholas Hilliard, 1590. Behind her two hovering angels prepare to crown her. She wears formal and elaborate clothes: tight blonde curls, a ruff, a stiff bodice, petticoat and over-skirt in intricate brocade patterns, deep lace cuffs, strings of pearls and several rings. A lengthy Latin inscription calls her an invincible virgin, mistress of all sciences, founder of Jesus College, Oxford, where the painting hangs.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Lady Mary Wroth
LMW and her siblings were well educated, in learning . . . fit for their birth and condition.
Roberts, Josephine A., and Lady Mary Wroth. “Introduction and Notes”. The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, Louisiana State University Press, pp. 3 - 75, 219.
8
A report to her father called her very forward in her learning.
Roberts, Josephine A., and Lady Mary Wroth. “Introduction and Notes”. The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, Louisiana State University Press, pp. 3 - 75, 219.
8
She danced well...
Occupation Frances Wright
FW delivered what was said to be the first public address by a woman on a public occasion before a large mixed audience
Eckhardt, Celia Morris. Fanny Wright. Harvard University Press.
171
in New Harmony, Indiana.
That is, the first public address...
Family and Intimate relationships Virginia Woolf
She noted in her diary: All the centuries seemed lit up, the past expressive, articulate . . . & so we reach the days of Elizabeth quite easily.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
3: 125
Literary Setting Virginia Woolf
The protagonist of Orlando notoriously begins as a sixteen-year-old romantic boy in the attic of a palatial great house in the late sixteenth century, practising sword-thrusts at the shrunken head of a Moor killed by...
Textual Features Mary Wollstonecraft
Though only about twenty percent of its extracts are written by women (the same proportion as from the Bible),
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
501
this book is feminist in its emphasis on the virtue of independent judgement as...
Textual Production Sarah Williams
The Camden Society published Letters Written by John Chamberlain During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, edited by a different Sarah Williams than her more prolific contemporary of that name; this one died in the...
Author summary Agnes Wenman
Agnes, Lady Wenman , a Catholic gentlewoman who married an Anglican in the later years of Queen Elizabeth , left one identified text: a translation from French of a work of ancient history, written originally...
Textual Production Evelyn Waugh
EW published his first historical biography, that of Edmund Campion , whom one of his reviewers called the most attractive of the Jesuits who suffered under Queen Elizabeth 's penal administration.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
(3 October 1935): 606
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Evelyn Waugh
Waugh emphasized that his book was popular, not scholarly. It opens with an account of Elizabeth on her deathbed as an old perjured woman, dying without comfort, and reflects throughout the story its author's regret...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Eglinton Wallace
She recommends the study of history, and her moral exhortation leans heavily on anecdotal, historical examples. (She also uses quotations from her own unpublished tragedy.)
Wallace, Eglinton. Letter from Lady Wallace to Capt. William Wallace. J. Debrett.
62
She cites Queen Elizabeth (among many others) as a...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Melesina Trench
The title poem of Ellen comes from a story lately reported by newspapers. Other pieces (several of them ballads) deal with historical figures like Queen Elizabeth , Cardinal Wolsey , an anonymous monk, and the...
Material Conditions of Writing Violet Trefusis
Around 1924, when VT was attending classes at the Sorbonne , she wrote a play (unpublished and probably unperformed) about Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I titled Les soeurs ennemies.
Sharpe, Henrietta. A Solitary Woman: A Life of Violet Trefusis. Constable.
79
Textual Production Josephine Tey
The play grew out of an argument with Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (Daviot's friend since they met on the set of Richard of Bordeaux) about Mary Stuart 's character. (At that time Daviot sided with Elizabeth of England
Textual Features Josephine Tey
Like Richard of Bordeaux, this play follows the troubled career of a less-than-successful ruler and ends with a forced abdication. Daviot's realistic, balanced portrayal of Mary went against conventional representations of the Queen as...
Textual Production Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
She was working on the research for this novel before she married; the work was interrupted by her father's death in May 1812. After it she wrote: He was the object for which I laboured...

Timeline

889-899: King Alfred's last decade was a kind of renaissance...

Writing climate item

889-899

King Alfred 's last decade was a kind of renaissance of learning in his kingdom of Wessex.

12 April 1533: Anne Boleyn, already secretly married to...

National or international item

12 April 1533

Anne Boleyn , already secretly married to Henry VIII , was publicly recognised as his consort in the public celebrations of the end of Lent.

19 May 1536: Anne Boleyn, mother of the future Queen Elizabeth,...

National or international item

19 May 1536

Anne Boleyn , mother of the future Queen Elizabeth , was executed in London for alleged high treason.

1538: Royal Injunctions appeared: a radical, Erasmian...

Building item

1538

Royal Injunctions appeared: a radical, Erasmian document whose first provision was that an English bible should be made available in every parish church.

June 1554: An eighteen-year-old servant, Elizabeth Croft,...

Building item

June 1554

An eighteen-year-old servant, Elizabeth Croft , confessed in front of a crowd gathered at St Paul's Cross in London that she had taken part in a hoax, playing a supernatural voice that spoke from a...

17 November 1558: Queen Mary I died, and Elizabeth I assumed...

National or international item

17 November 1558

Queen Mary I died, and Elizabeth I assumed the throne of England and Wales.

1559: Negotiating between opposing factions, Elizabeth...

National or international item

1559

Negotiating between opposing factions, Elizabeth I sought to establish the English Church under her headship; Thomas Cranmer 's Prayer Book of 1552 became the official Book of Common Prayer.

1560: The complete Geneva Bible appeared, translated...

Writing climate item

1560

The complete GenevaBible appeared, translated by English Protestant exiles from the reign of Mary : the first accessible or mass-circulation edition of the Bible in English, with small format and roman (not gothic) print.

18 July 1564: The Merchant Adventurers' Company received...

National or international item

18 July 1564

The Merchant Adventurers' Company received a new charter from Elizabeth I that, among other things, incorporated the company in London, extended the geographical range of its dealings, and solified its status as a national...

May 1568: Mary Queen of Scots fled from Scotland to...

National or international item

May 1568

Mary Queen of Scots fled from Scotland to England; she was imprisoned by Elizabeth I after standing trial in October that year.

1570: The Scholemaster was published, by Roger...

Building item

1570

The Scholemaster was published, by Roger Ascham , who had been tutor to Princess Elizabeth .

25 February 1570: Pope Pius V issued his papal bull Regnans...

National or international item

25 February 1570

Pope Pius V issued his papal bull Regnans in excelsis, excommunicating Elizabeth I and releasing her subjects from their allegiance to her.

9-27 July 1575: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favourite...

National or international item

9-27 July 1575

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester , favourite of Queen Elizabeth , threw a particularly magnificent entertainment for her at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire.

August 1578: Three female wax figures were found in a...

Building item

August 1578

Three female wax figures were found in a London dunghill with bristles through the chest; the Spanish ambassador reported a widespread assumption that this was a witchcraft threat to the queen 's life.

1579: For the first time in Elizabeth's reign,...

Building item

1579

For the first time in Elizabeth 's reign, the Jesuits were expelled from England.

Texts

Marguerite de Navarre,. A Godly Medytacyon of the Cristen Sowle. Translator Elizabeth I, Queen, Wesel D. van der Straten, 1548.
Elizabeth I, Queen. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Editors Marcus, Leah S. et al., University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Shell, Marc et al. Elizabeth’s Glass. Translator Elizabeth I, Queen, University of Nebraska, 1993.
Marguerite de Navarre, and Marguerite de Navarre. The Mirrour or Glasse of the Sinful Soul. Translator Elizabeth I, Queen, 1544.
Elizabeth I, Queen. The Poems of Queen Elizabeth I. Editor Bradner, Leicester, Brown University Press, 1964.