Recently the University of Chicago Press published "Elizabeth I: Collected Works" to considerable critical acclaim. "Collected Works" brought together for the first time in one volume the speeches, poems, prayers and selected letters of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), all in modernized spelling and punctuation. With this new volume, Januel Mueller and Leah S. Marcus give specialists full access to key originals of the Queen's texts presented in "Collected Works". The originals selected for inclusion here are compositions that survive in Elizabeth's own handwriting, in English and in foreign languages, as well as her foreign language compositions perserved by other hands or in printed editions. Presented in transcriptions that reproduce the spelling and punctuation of their 16th-century sources, these texts convey both the expressive and otherwise significant features of Elizabeth's writing.
Through the transcriptions of texts in her own hand, readers can track the Queen's language and compositional style - her choices of vocabulary and phrasing; her vagaries of capitalization, spelling and punctuation; her often heavy revisions and redraftings; and her insertions of postscripts and second thoughts. The texts in foreign languages, meanwhile, will allow readers to prepare their own English translations trom these original sources. A unique resources for scholars, this book offers much fuller and more detailed access to Elizabeth and her writings than can be obtained from the modern English versions alone.