Young Bess

Historical Novels and Growing up

Bibliographic Data

ID3946305
AuthorsAlison Light (corresponding author)
Year1989
Volume33
Issue1
Pages57-71
Publication date1989-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/fr.1989.30
OpenAlexW2328727055
LanguageEN
Citations received21
References cited6

What visions of grandeur did these words conjur up for me, an eager grammar-school swot, in the early 1960s? I was introduced to Margaret Irwin's trilogy about Queen Elizabeth I by my mother on one of our many trips to the Carnegie Public Library in Fratton Road, Portsmouth: Young Bess (1944), Elizabeth Captive Princess (1948) and Elizabeth and The Prince of Spain (1953), all chart the fortunes of the Tudor monarch from girlhood to her coronation as England's Virgin Queen. These opening lines can still thrill me, though I'm less excited by the prospect of leading a regiment. No one in my family was a royalist my mother and grandmother were outspoken antimonarchists -'about time they pensioned off Mr and Mrs Windsor' was their usual attitude. Yet perhaps the fact that my middle name is Elizabeth, my birthday shared with the Queen Mother, and I too was about twelve years old when I first encountered Young Bess, made me more susceptible. This imaginary exchange between the princess and Admiral Thomas Seymour on the flagship of her father's navy, as they watch the French fleet approaching in the Solent, was itself not a million miles

Adventure · Ancient history · Art history · Buckingham · Coronation · Feminism · Human sexuality · Queen (butterfly · Sociology · Trilogy · Windsor · Anthropology · Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · History · Irish and British Studies · Themes in Literature Analysis

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