Elizabeth Tudor (1533-1603) ruled for 45 years over one of the most remarkable periods in British history. The pious yet ruthless Virgin Queen was also an immensely productive and gifted writer who received one of the finest humanist educations of her day and, from the age of 11, produced a steady flow of letters, speeches, prayers and poems in various languages. "Elizabeth I: Collected Works" is the first volume to bring together her extraordinary literary production. This long-awaited edition includes Elizabeth's clumsy childhood letters to her forbidding father, Henry VIII; her fledgling speeches as monarch in which she struggled with parliament over her right to remain a virgin and to refuse to name a successor; and her earnest prayers. Within this volume the reader can find heartfelt entreaties to God ("Preserve me also from all defilement of body and spirit, and keep me from the temptations of the enemy and from all dangers that could befall me") as well as orders to torture suspected traitors ("And if that shall not move them, then you shall cause them to be put to the rack, and to feel the taste thereof until they shall deal more plainly").
The most important of Queen Elizabeth's extant writings in other languages - French, Latin, Italian, Spanish, ancient Greek - are here offered in new and meticulous translations, enabling readers to gain an unprecedentedly deep and intimate picture of the doubts and conflicts behind her public presentations. "Elizabeth I: Collected Works", the first volume of its kind, reveals Elizabeth's brilliance as both a monarch and a dazzling writer of the English Renaissance.

Volume editor: Leah S. Marcus