Elizabeth Jenkins

"Not all of us have books publisher in our hundredth year, and some readers may need reminding of Elizabeth Jenkins's considerable literary reputation. She is the suthor of twelve novels (the first published in 1929) and this is her twelfth work of non-fiction. She was one of the pioneers of the 'reportage' novel; her biography of Elizabeth I impressed even A.L. Rowse; and she is the doyenne of Jane Austen aficionados and the only surviving Founding Member of the Jane Austen Society. She recounts here the story of its beginnings (and deals summarily, too, with the theory that Chatsworth was the model for Pemberley). She lived for much of her adult life in the house her father bought her in Hampstead, and so 'the view from Downshire Hill' encapsulates her experiences of working and writing in the capital and its attendant encounters and friendships, particularly with a gallery of writers, publishers, and actors. Her polite, sensible shoes style has a wry, attractive edge. Especially enjoyable, for instance, is her account of how, when first in London after finishing at Cambridge, she was taken up (and down) by Virginia Woolf. As her nephew, Sir Michael Jenkins, recalls in his Introduction, she was once well described as being personally 'rather like her books, a combination of understatement and insight'." -- Provided by publisher.

The Bravo Case was one of the great mysteries of late Victorian England, a mystery that has never satisfactorily been cleared up. Surprisingly little has been written about a chief protagonist, the handsome and successful Dr. Gully, owner of an enormous practice at Malvern between 1842 and 1871.

Countless books have been written about Elizabeth I of England, but rarely has Elizabeth the woman been presented with the vividness, authority, and perception which inform this fascinating and important work. Miss Jenkins brings the great queen, her court, and the whole exciting age to which she gave her name brilliantly to life. There was something almost bewitched in Elizabeth, as though she came from a changeling world, cold, passionate and peculiar. She was only two when the head of her mother, Anne Boleyn, was cut off and at eight she said, "I will never marry." Prince Edward's letter to his dear sister Elizabeth, after they had been ruthlessly separated, shows that both children early knew their dangers; he wrote: "I hope to visit you soon, if nothing happens to us in the meantime." The young Elizabeth was never entirely safe, her position rarely secure. The advisers of her Catholic sister, Mary Tudor, urged that she be put to death, saying, "The Princess Elizabeth is greatly to be feared, she has a spirit full of incantations." But Elizabeth outlived Bloody Mary and came to the throne—even though at her coronation no bishop could be found to put the crown on her head. Queen at last, Elizabeth brought with her to the throne extraordinary gifts which were manifest from the very beginning of her reign: an unfailing instinct choosing her advisers, the great personal magnetism which made her an object of adoration to her subjects, the financial genius which contributed so largely in the later prosperity of her realm, and the apparent vacillation which was to be such a strong weapon in her diplomacy. Elizabeth must surely have been one of the most remarkable women who have ever lived. Her fierce and consuming passion to play her role as Queen of England, her great physical energy, her fantastic vanity, her strange mixture of personal cowardice and extreme bravery, her steadfast loyalty to her trusted friends and her brutal treatment of those who offended her—everything about her is interesting. Miss Jenkins has done much to bring us closer to this woman who was as great as she was complex. Elizabeth the Great is enthralling reading from the first page to the last.

In affairs of the heart, the race is not necessarily won by the swift or the fair. Imogen, the beautiful and much younger wife of distinguished barrister Evelyn Gresham, is facing the greatest challenge of her married life. Their neighbour Blanche Silcox, competent, middle-aged and ungainly—the very opposite of Imogen—seems to be vying for Evelyn's attention. And to Imogen's increasing disbelief, she may be succeeding.

Interpretation and analysis of the thirty-year relationship between Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Elizabeth, Queen of England.

The definitive biography of one of the fathers of the modern novel, and the most remarkable and representative Englishman of the seventeenth century. This book should be of interest to readers of literature, biography and history.

Commissioned to investigate these cases and develop a classic mystery story, eight of England's most distinguished mystery writers have recreated some of Scotland Yard's most exciting and notorious cases.

A biography of the nineteenth-century author famous for the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" which denounced slavery and intensified the disagreement between the North and South.