My Just Desire: The Life of Bess Raleigh, Wife to Sir Walter - Hardcover

Beer, Anna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345452909 ISBN 13: 9780345452900

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2003

Synopsis

Young, beautiful, and connected by blood to the most powerful families in England, Bess Throckmorton had as much influence over Queen Elizabeth I as any woman in the realm—but she risked everything to marry the most charismatic man of the day. The secret marriage between Bess and the Queen’s beloved Sir Walter Ralegh cost both of them their fortunes, their freedom, and very nearly their lives. Yet it was Bess, resilient, passionate, and politically shrewd, who would live to restore their name and reclaim her political influence. In this dazzling biography, Bess Ralegh finally emerges from her husband’s shadow to stand as a complex, commanding figure in her own right.

Writing with grace and drama, Anna Beer brings Bess to life as a woman, a wife and mother, an intimate friend of poets and courtiers, and a skilled political infighter in Europe’s most powerful and most dangerous court. The only daughter of an ambitious aristocratic family, Bess was thrust at a tender age into the very epicenter of royal power when her parents secured her the position of Elizabeth’s Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber. Bess proved to be a natural player on this stage of extravagant mythmaking and covert sexual politics, until she fell in love with the Queen’s Captain of the Guard, the handsome, virile, meteorically rising Ralegh. But their secret marriage, swiftly followed by the birth of their son, would have grave consequences for both of them.

Brooking the Queen’s wrath and her husband’s refusal to acknowledge their marriage, Bess brilliantly stage-managed her social and political rehabilitation and emerged from prison as the leader of a brilliant, fast-living aristocratic set. She survived personal tragedy, the ruinous global voyages launched by her husband, and the vicious plots of high-placed enemies. Though Raleigh in the end fell afoul of court intrigue, Bess lived on into the reign of James I as a woman of hard-won wisdom and formidable power.

With compelling historical insight, Anna Beer recreates here the vibrant pageant of Elizabethan England—the brilliant wit and vicious betrayals, the new discoveries and old rivalries, the violence and fierce sexuality of life at court. Peopled by poets and princes, spanning the reigns of two monarchs, moving between the palaces of London and the manor house outside the capital, My Just Desire is the portrait of a remarkable woman who lived at the center of an extraordinary time.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“The extraordinary story of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter, has been
overlooked for four centuries. My Just Desire is a riveting tale of
intrigue, passion, skull-duggery and treachery. It provides a fascinating
glimpse into the tumultuous life of one of Elizabethan England's most
beguiling women.” -Giles Milton, author of Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America and Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened the East

Praise for My Just Desire

“Anna Beer has lovingly restored Bess Ralegh to her rightful place among Elizabethan heroines. Brave, energetic, and resourceful to the point of audacity—Bess was a successful gambler against the odds. She rescued the reputation of her own husband—Sir Walter Ralegh—and now, four centuries later, Anna Beer has returned the favor.”
—AMANDA FOREMAN
Author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

“Beer has vividly recreated the period and added a wealth of wonderful detail . . . A gem of a book.”
—ALISON WEIR
Author of Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley

“The extraordinary story of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter, has been overlooked for four centuries. My Just Desire is a riveting tale of intrigue, passion, skullduggery and treachery. It provides a fascinating glimpse into the tumultuous life of one of Elizabethan England’s most beguiling women.”
—GILES MILTON
Author of Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English
Colonists in America

“Energetic and ambitious, Bess Raleigh was wife to the courtier-pirate-poet Sir Walter. Her tumultuous story is set against the plots and counterplots in the final years of the ageing Queen Elizabeth I, who presided over a glittering, corrupt and disintegrating court in which the Raleghs were always in favor or danger. Bess and her world come vividly to life in this fast-moving tale of a woman who had to be wife, mother, prisoner and politician.”
—JANET TODD
Author of Mary Wollstonecraft

About the Author:

Anna Beer is the author of a critically acclaimed academic book, Sir Walker Ralegh and His Readers in the Seventeenth Century. A Lecturer in English Literature at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, Beer lives with her two daughters, Becca and Elise.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0345452909
• ISBN 13: 9780345452900
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292