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The Lisle Letters consist of the personal, official, and business correspondence of the household of Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, the illegitimate but acknowledged son of Edward IV, during the years 1533 to 1540 when he was Lord Deputy of Calais. These seven critical years in English history were marked by the rise, ascendency, and fall of Thomas Cromwell and the letters reflect the mixture of passion, terror, and politics that was the court of Henry VIII. They also present the everyday concerns of the Lisle household. No other source provides such an abundance of detail about daily life - marriage, child rearing, education, clothing, food, and furnishing. The Lisle Letters are the Tudor world in microcosm.

In a one-volume abridgement, these sixteenth-century letters paint a magnificent portrait of family life amidst the intrigue, terror, and politics of the court of Henry VIII. The culmination of Lord Lisle's imprisonment in the Tower of London.