"[Elizabeth Jenkins] combines familiar materials with some that are little known in such a way that the reader feels he is learning for the first time what these people were really like. Dr. A.L. Rowse, one of the foremost living scholars of the Elizabethan Age, who contributes a new introduction to this special edition, has elsewhere called Miss Jenkins' book 'quite the most perceptive book about Elizabeth that I have ever read.'"--Editors' Preface