Robert Southwell's appeal to Queen Elizabeth I against her proclamation of October 1591 against the Roman Catholics

Addressing both Robert Southwell's poetry and private writings including letters and diary material, this title shows to what extent Southwell engaged in direct artistic debate with Spenser Sidney and Shakespeare.

As a woman wielding public authority, Elizabeth I embodied a paradox at the very center of 16th century patriarchal English society. This text illuminates the ways in which the Queen and her subjects variously exploited or obfuscated this contradiction.

Glitteringly detailed and engagingly written, the magisterial Elizabeth I brings to vivid life the golden age of sixteenth-century England and the uniquely fascinating monarch who presided over it. A woman of intellect and presence, Elizabeth was the object of extravagant adoration by her contemporaries. She firmly believed in the divine providence of her sovereignty and exercised supreme authority over the intrigue-laden Tudor court and Elizabethan England at large. Brilliant, mercurial, seductive, and maddening, an inspiration to artists and adventurers and the subject of vicious speculation over her choice not to marry, Elizabeth became the most powerful ruler of her time. Anne Somerset has immortalized her in this splendidly illuminating account. BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Anne Somerset's Queen Anne.

Far more than a dry hagiographical account of the lives of saints, this entertaining and authoritative dictionary breathes life into its subjects and is as browsable as it is informative. First published in 1978, the Oxford Dictionary of Saints offers more than 1,700 fascinating and informative entries covering the lives, cults, and artistic associations of saints from around the world, from the famous to the obscure, the rich to the poor, and the academic to the uneducated. From all walks of life and from all periods of history and from around the world, the wide varieties of personalities and achievements of the canonized are reflected. An updated introduction explains the steps towards becoming a saint, the processes of beatification and canonization. This revised fifth edition includes appendices containing five maps of pilgrimage sites, a list of saints' patronages and iconographical emblems, and a calendar of principal feasts, as well as a new appendix on pilgrimages.