Sir Walter Raleigh: Being a True and Vivid Account of the Life and Times of the Explorer, Soldier, Scholar, Poet, and Courtier--The Controversial Hero of the Elizabethian Age - Hardcover

Trevelyan, Raleigh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080507502X ISBN 13: 9780805075021

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2004

Synopsis

An enthralling new biography of the most exciting and charismatic adventurer in the history of the English-speaking world

Tall, dark, handsome, and damnably proud, Sir Walter Raleigh was one of history’s most romantic characters. An explorer, soldier, courtier, pirate, and poet, Raleigh risked his life by trifling with the Virgin Queen’s affections. To his enemies—and there were many—he was an arrogant liar and traitor, deserving of every one of his thirteen years in the Tower of London.

Regardless of means, his accomplishments are legion: he founded the first American colony, gave the Irish the potato, and defeated Spain. He was also a brilliant operator in the shark pool of Elizabethan court politics, until he married a court beauty, without Elizabeth’s permission, and later challenged her capricious successor, James I.

Raleigh Trevelyan has traveled to each of the principal places where Raleigh adventured—Ireland, the Azores, Roanoke Islands, and the legendary El Dorado (Orinoco)—and uncovered new insights into Raleigh’s extraordinary life. New information from the Spanish archives give a freshness and immediacy to this detailed and convincing portrait of one of the most compelling figures of the Elizabethan era.

About this title

About the Author

Raleigh Trevelyan, a direct descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh, was for many years a distinguished publisher; his previous books include The Fortress and Rome 44. During the last two decades he has combed the British, Spanish, Italian, and his own family’s archives to write this authoritative life story. He lives in London and Cornwall.

Reviews

Trevelyan (The Fortress; Rome '44), a direct descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh, has written an exhaustive, indeed overlong, and at times too reverential biography of his legendary ancestor. Raleigh (1554-1618) was the prototypical Renaissance man: he explored the Americas, he was a poet and historian, an Elizabethan courtier, a soldier who fought the Spanish and an effective government administrator. Raleigh was also, notes Trevelyan, extremely ambitious and proud, thus making powerful enemies. Raleigh came from humble beginnings and made his first mark as a soldier. Trevelyan cites at length from Raleigh's poetry, which he wrote to flatter Queen Elizabeth. In 1584, Raleigh sponsored a voyage to the territory known as Virginia, where he founded the first American colony, the ill-fated Roanoke settlement. He also helped defend England against the 1588 Spanish Armada. In 1591, Raleigh made the mistake of secretly marrying one of the queen's servants. A jealous Elizabeth had him and his wife thrown into the Tower. After his release, he explored Guiana, and Trevelyan does an excellent job recreating the journey using Raleigh's writings. His enemies, especially Robert Cecil, were smearing him to the future King James I, who, when he took the throne in 1603, put Raleigh on trial for treason; he was found guilty. Trevelyan convincingly asserts that the charges were trumped up, a mere pretext for eliminating a political rival. King James let Raleigh live, but he spent 13 years in the Tower and was finally beheaded in 1618. Trevelyan's meticulously researched narrative will be informative for anyone looking to learn more about Elizabethan England and one of its most influential characters. 16 pages of b&w photos, maps.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A good biography will immerse readers in an era, and this massive work provides a cogent look at Elizabethan England as Trevelyan suspends Walter Raleigh's life in the tensions of the time. Literary and humane, a kind, even uxorious, husband, Raleigh was also as ruthless as they come, involved at one point or other in massacres, executions, battles, plundering, and merciless expropriation in Ireland. He came out of these exertions rich, a commoner who rose to the heights of society for a time as Elizabeth I's favorite courtier. Trevelyan reveals Raleigh's ambition in meticulous detail as he describes Raleigh's projects of colonization in the New World and warfare against Spain in the Old, for which Raleigh will always be legendary. He experienced innumerable controversies, which Trevelyan explains exhaustively, drawing copiously from Raleigh's verse, prose, and archives. This thorough and accomplished work is the new standard for Raleighana. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080507502X
• ISBN 13: 9780805075021
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 640