Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In the court of Elizabeth I, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is favoured above all the noblemen of England. It is rumoured that the Queen may chose him for her husband, but Leicester has secretly married the beautiful Amy Robsart. Fearing ruin if this were known, he keeps his lovely young wife a virtual prisoner in an old country house. Meanwhile Leicester's manservant Varney has sinister designs on Amy, and enlists an alchemist to help him further his evil ambitions. Brilliantly recreating the splendour and pageantry of Elizabethan England, with Shakespeare, Walter Ralegh and Elizabeth herself among its characters, Kenilworth (1821) is a compelling depiction of intrigue, power struggles and superstition in a bygone age.
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Synopsis
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J. H. ALEXANDER
-- Based on the acclaimed Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels
-- The first authoritative edition drawn from Scott's original texts
-- With a special introduction for the Penguin Classic edition
'No historian's Queen Elizabeth was ever so perfectly a woman as the fictitious Elizabeth of Kenilworth, ' wrote Thomas Hardy. Scott's magnificent novel re-creates the drama, and the strange mixture of assurance and profound unease of the Age of Elizabeth through the story of Amy Robsart. A woman of great beauty and integrity, Amy is married to the Earl of Leicester, one of the Queen's favourites, who must keep Amy confined to Cumnor Place and the marriage a secret, or incur royal displeasure.
Rich in character, melodrama and romance, Kenilworth (1821) is rivalled only by the great Elizabethan dramas. Scott amply justified V. S. Pritchett's accolade: 'the single Shakespearean talent of the English novel'.
About the Author
Sir Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771. Educated for the law, he obtained the office of sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire in 1799 and in 1806 the office of clerk of session, a post whose duties he fulfilled for some twenty-five years. His lifelong interest in Scottish antiquity and the ballads which recorded Scottish history led him to try his hand at narrative poems of adventure and action. The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Marmion (1808), and The Lady of the Lake (1810) made his reputation as one of the leading poets of his time. A novel, Waverley, which he had begun in 1805, was published anonymously in 1814. Subsequent novels appeared with the note “by the author of Waverley”; hence his novels often are called collectively “the Waverley novels.” Some of the most famous of these are Old Mortality (1816), Rob Roy (1817), Ivanhoe (1819), Kenilworth (1821), and Quentin Durward (1823). In recognition of his literary work Scott was made a baronet in 1819. During his last years he held various official positions and published biographies, editions of Swift and Dryden, tales, lyric poetry, and various studies of history and antiquity. He died in 1832.