Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), among the most famous writers of his time, was a member of the Bloomsbury group and the author of a number of biographies. His Eminent Victorians, published in 1918, inaugurated a new style of biography distinguished by irony, wit, irreverence, and elegance of language. He is also the author of Elizabeth and Essex, Biographical Essays, and Literary Essays.

One of the most famous and baffling romances in history-between Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex-began in May of 1587, when she was fifty-three and he was just shy of twenty. Their relationship continued until 1601, when the Earl of Essex was beheaded for treason. And, in a succession of brilliant scenes, Strachey portrays the Queen's and the Earl's compelling attraction for on another, their impassioned disagreements, and their mutual contest for power, which led to a final, tragic confrontation. Here we also have superb portraits of influential people of the time: Francis Bacon, Robert Cecil, Walter Raleigh, and other figures of the court who struggled to assert themselves in a kingdom that was primarily defined by her sovereign, and so now seen through history's lens as Elizabethan England.