Elizabeth and Essex
by Lytton Strachey
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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Once considered the definitive piece after its 1928 release, it has in more recent times been superseded by works of academics and aficionados with the advantage of modern research methodologies.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.
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