The Elizabeth Icon, 1603-2003 [Hardcover]

Julia M. Walker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2004

Surveying four-hundred years of British history, Walker examines how the memory - the icon - of Queen Elizabeth has been used as a marker for Englishness in disputes political and social, in art, literature and popular culture. From her second Westminster tomb to the pseudo-secret histories of the Restoration, from Georgian ballads to Victorian paintings, biographies, children's books, Suffragette banners, novels and films, trends in scholarship and rubber bath ducks, the icon becomes more powerful as the idea of Englishness becomes more arbitrary.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book deals strikingly with the importance of memory and how the different recollections of Elizabeth I open up new ways of understanding English politics and culture from the Seventeenth-century to our own. Walker examines numerous representations and writes in a conversational style that will be accessible to a wide-ranging audience." -- Carole Levin, Willa Cather Professor of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln

"Julia Walker's The Elizabeth Icon is not just a scholarly tour de force - it is also critically innovative in its exploration of changing memorialisations of the Virgin Queen. Walker brings a new level of intellectual understanding and clarity to her analysis of a crucial yet neglected element within British historical self-consciousness: the changing reception and transmission of ideas of individual monarchs. In this compelling study, she shows how a series of cultural as well as historical contingencies have contributed to the changing definition of a key emblem, not simply of British monarchy, but also, more generally, of Britain itself.' - Phillipa Berry, Fellow and Director of Studies in English, King's College, Cambridge University

About the Author

Julia Walker is Professor of English and Director of Women's Studies, State University of New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (March 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403911991
• ISBN-13: 978-1403911995
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,575,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on Elizabeth I, hands down, June 11, 2006

By 

Spamela Harlow (Saskatchewan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Elizabeth Icon, 1603-2003 (Hardcover)

With so many big books on the market about the most amazing
queen (and she was also a great king) in history, why should a reader
buy this one? Because it is simply the best one out there. Innovative,
detailed, witty, and the best book jacket image of Elizabeth EVER.
This is the best book to be published on Elizabeth in the last twenty years
and if like me you have scarce financial resources, this should be your
splurge.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More tea, Vicar?, September 27, 2005

By 

Cedric LaFarge (Newport, Rhode Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Elizabeth Icon, 1603-2003 (Hardcover)

If you like drinking tea and watching Masterpiece Theater, this one is for you -- hey, and it would be so cute to read it by the light of those real beeswax candles. Walker is a real true-blue Anglophile -- which means that there's lots of stuff about Britain in this book, lots of which you won't understand, but then she admits she doesn't too some of the time. Book that vacation to BuckingHam Palace and take this book along.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thinking person's approach to history, October 4, 2004

By 

Lauren - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Elizabeth Icon, 1603-2003 (Hardcover)

An artful and insightful investigation into the phenomenon of the iconography of one of England's most co-opted historical figures. Meticulously researched and documented, Dr. Walker's study of the evolution of the Gloriana icon and the deliberate revisionism surrounding her role in the English consciousness from the moment of her death into current pop culture flips the traditional Elizabeth I scholarship on its head. *And there was much rejoicing*

One of the book's greatest strengths is the masterly interspersion of snatches of wry humor and dry wit throughout the formidable scholarly passages. The analysis is lively because the author succeeds so effortlessly at animating her argument with the kind of surprising cleverness that makes an academic text both entertaining and credible.

`The Elizabeth Icon' revisits an oft-studied era in English history with a different perspective and reveals important facets previously disregarded as insignificant or overlooked as immaterial. It goes on to offer new insight into why and how successors, politicians, and citizens conceptualize public figures and national identity.

This kind of study is particularly interesting in an America where the current administration is often accused of distorting