From the day of her accession right down to 1959 the English have held the first Queen Elizabeth in peculiar affection. The coming of a second Elizabethan age—though the analogy is perhaps rather journalistic than true—stimulated a whole new surge of interest.
In Elizabeth the Great (Coward- McCann, $5.00), Miss Elizabeth Jenkins has assembled all the detailed information such interest could demand. This isn’t a history of Queen Elizabeth’s reign in any ordinary sense. It is a meticulously collected and documented account of Elizabeth herself, what she looked like, the cosmetics she used, how she spoke and wrote and thought, her habits, her hopes and her fears. The story of her life is built up like a chain of tiny beads and Miss Jenkins’ agreeable self-effacing style conceals the immensely careful scholarship which must have gone into it.
Comments