Thanks to Shakespeare, Hollywood, and the formidable Elizabeth I herself, Elizabethan England remains a place and time that fascinates us. Modern England still has visible memorials of the Elizabethans--the houses they built, the objects they cherished, the patterns they imposed upon the very landscape. A. L. Rowse's famously vivid portrayal of the Elizabethan world is a detailed account of that society and tradition, from the lowest social class to the men and women who governed the realm. A major new introduction from Christopher Haigh offers both a reflection on Rowse's masterpiece and an...

Back in print in a new paperback edition are these two volumes by A.L. Rowse that represent one of the great historical works of our time. They are a master historian's exploration of the social and cultural history of the Elizabethan Age. In The Life of the Society, Mr. Rowse surveys the life of each class of Englishmen from the Court downward, and presents a remarkable portrait of Elizabethan life and of the mentality, conscious and unconscious, to which the way of life gave rise. He portrays the life of the body as well as the life of the mind, including food and sanitation, sports and...

Elizabethan society is arguably the most successful in English history. The adventurers and merchants (as well as the poets and playwrights) of that age are legendary. The subject of this classic study by A.L. Rowse is that society's 'expansion'. Elizabethan society expanded both physically (first into Cornwall, then Ireland, then across the oceans to first contact with Russian, the Canadian North and then the opening up of trade with India and the Far East) and in terms of ideas and influence on international affairs. Rowse argues that in the Elizabethan age we see the beginning of England's...