1929 Rare Book - ELIZABETH I (Queen of England) And ESSEX : A Tragic History by Lytton Strachey bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe.
(description)
Author: Strachey, Lytton.
Title: Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History.
Publisher : London: Chatto & Windus, 1929. 3rd printing.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 9 " X 6 ".
Pages: 287 pages.
Binding: Attractive, very beautiful and very good, near fine, half morocco leather binding bounded by Sangorski and Sutcliffe with British symbols in the centers of the spine panels - "ER" for Elizabeth Regina under a crown, etc. (hinges fine, overall slightly scuffed - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover.
Content: Near fine content (bright, tight and clean). Upper edge gilt.
Illustrations: Complete with 6 beautiful full-page portraits.
The book: A very attractive edition of Elizabeth and Essex - One of the most famous and tortured romances in history - between Elizabeth I, Queen of England, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex - began in 1587, when she was fifty-three and he was nineteen. Their passionate affair continued for five years until Essex was beheaded for treason in 1601. In a fast-paced succession of brilliantly-rendered scenes, Lytton Strachey portrays Elizabeth and Essex's compelling attraction for each other, their impassioned disagreements, and their mutual struggle for power, which culminated so tragically - for both of them. Alongside the doomed love affair, Strachey pins colorful portraits of the leading characters and influential figures of the time: Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, Robert Cecil, and other members of her glittering court who fought to assert themselves in a kingdom and a country defined by Elizabeth's incomparable reign. Lytton Strachey here illuminates, in spellbinding prose, one of the most poignant affairs in history alongside the glamour and intrigue of the Elizabethan era... This copy in a beautiful binding by Sangorski and Sutcliffe.
The author: Giles Lytton Strachey (1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians, he is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His biography Queen Victoria (1921) was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Strachey's theory of biography was now fully developed and mature. He was greatly influenced by Dostoyevsky, whose novels he had been reading and reviewing as they appeared in Constance Garnett's translations. The influence of Freud was important on Strachey's later works, most notably on Elizabeth and Essex, but not at this earlier stage.
The binder: Sangorski & Sutcliffe is a firm of bookbinders established in London in 1901. It is considered to be one of the most important bookbinding companies of the 20th century, famous for its luxurious jeweled bindings that used real gold and precious stones in their book covers.