Published to substantial critical acclaim, Elizabeth I: Collected Works brought together for the first time in one volume the speeches, poems, prayers, and selected letters of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), all in modernized spelling and punctuation. With this new volume, Janel Mueller and Leah S. Marcus give specialists fuller access to key originals of the queen's texts presented in Collected Works.

The originals selected for inclusion here are compositions that survive in Elizabeth's own handwriting, in English and in foreign languages, as well as her foreign language compositions preserved by other hands or in printed editions. Presented in transcriptions that reproduce the spelling and punctuation of their sixteenth-century sources, these texts convey many of the expressive and significant features of Elizabeth's writing. Through the transcriptions of texts in her own hand, readers can track the queen's language and compositional style-her choices of vocabulary and phrasing; her habits of capitalization, spelling, and punctuation; her often heavy revisions and redraftings; and her insertions of postscripts and second thoughts. The texts in foreign languages, meanwhile, will allow readers to prepare their own English translations from these original sources.

A unique resource for scholars of English literature and the Renaissance, this companion to the Collected Works offers much fuller and more detailed access to Elizabeth and her writings than can be obtained from the modern English versions alone.

This long-awaited and masterfully edited volume contains nearly all of the writings of Queen Elizabeth I: the clumsy letters of childhood, the early speeches of a fledgling queen, and the prayers and poetry of the monarch's later years. The first collection of its kind, Elizabeth I reveals brilliance on two counts: that of the Queen, a dazzling writer and a leading intellect of the English Renaissance, and that of the editors, whose copious annotations make the book not only essential to scholars but accessible to general readers as well.

"This collection shines a light onto the character and experience of one of the most interesting of monarchs. . . . We are likely never to get a closer or clearer look at her. An intriguing and intense portrait of a woman who figures so importantly in the birth of our modern world."—Publishers Weekly

"An admirable scholarly edition of the queen's literary output. . . . This anthology will excite scholars of Elizabethan history, but there is something here for all of us who revel in the English language."—John Cooper, Washington Times

"Substantial, scholarly, but accessible. . . . An invaluable work of reference."—Patrick Collinson, London Review of Books

"In a single extraordinary volume . . . Marcus and her coeditors have collected the Virgin Queen's letters, speeches, poems and prayers. . . . An impressive, heavily footnoted volume."—Library Journal

"This excellent anthology of [Elizabeth's] speeches, poems, prayers and letters demonstrates her virtuosity and afford the reader a penetrating insight into her 'wiles and understandings.'"—Anne Somerset, New Statesman

"Here then is the only trustworthy collection of the various genres of Elizabeth's writings. . . . A fine edition which will be indispensable to all those interested in Elizabeth I and her reign."—Susan Doran, History

"In the torrent of words about her, the queen's own words have been hard to find. . . . [This] volume is a major scholarly achievement that makes Elizabeth's mind much more accessible than before. . . . A veritable feast of material in different genres."—David Norbrook, The New Republic

"Leah Marcus's The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes is a fascinating study of why James and Charles promoted some types of rural sport and festival and of how certain literary texts participated in promoting or critiquing royal policy. . . . Marcus provocatively links texts not often studied in conjunction with one another, and she provides strong and detailed readings of those texts."—Jean E. Howard