The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen (Queenship and Power) [Hardcover]

Catherine Loomis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0230104126 | ISBN-13: 978-0230104129

The death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 was greeted by an outpouring of official proclamations, gossip-filled letters, tense diary entries, diplomatic dispatches, and somber sermons. English poets wrote hundreds of elegies to Elizabeth, and playwrights began bringing her onto the stage. This book uses these historical and literary sources, including a maid of honor’s eyewitness account of the explosion of the Queen’s corpse, to provide a detailed history of Elizabeth’s final illness and death, and to show Elizabeth’s subjects—peers and poets, bishops and beggars, women and men—responding to their loss by remembering and reconstructing their Queen.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Catherine Loomis’s The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen is a valuable addition to the Palgrave series Queenship and Power, as well as to the growing body of scholarship on the afterlife of Elizabeth. Loomis’s is a must-read book for all students of queenship, gender, and the politics of memory in the early modern period.”—Huntington Library Quarterly

“This book provides a thorough and fascinating exploration of the posthumous representation of Elizabeth I in literary and material culture. Loomis is a thoughtful, interesting, meticulous scholar and this carefully constructed and highly readable book demonstrates a fine blending of literary and historical work.”—Jo Carney, Chair, Department of English, The College of New Jersey

About the Author

Catherine Loomis is Associate Professor of English at the University of New Orleans. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Rochester. She is the author of William Shakespeare: A Documentary Volume (2002), as well as articles about Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, performance history, and early modern women writers.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (September 15, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230104126
• ISBN-13: 978-0230104129
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,122,433 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Catherine Loomis is an associate professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of New Orleans. Her research interests include Shakespeare, early modern women writers, and Queen Elizabeth I.

This book began when I re-discovered a manuscript by Elizabeth Southwell, who was a maid of honor to Queen Elizabeth I. In her account of the events surrounding the Queen's death, Southwell reports that Elizabeth's corpse exploded. As I tried to find independent sources to confirm the details in Southwell's manuscript, I realized that there was no detailed history of Elizabeth's final days. This book describes the Queen's final illness and death, looks at the poems and plays written to commemorate her, and takes a serious look at the Southwell narrative.