Summary: The Life Of Elizabeth I By Alison Weir

Madeline Hoffman
Dr. Scotti
Book Review- HIS 101
1 March 2016
Alison Weir. The Life of Elizabeth I. United States: Ballantine Books, 2008. Alison Weir is a well-known English writer. She became a published writer in 1989 and started writing books in the 1990s. With over one million books sold in the UK and almost two million sold in the United States, Weir is perceived to be one of the leading female historians in the United Kingdom. She published her first book in 2006, and she has had four more books released since that year. Some of her books include: The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Traitors of the Tower, and Elizabeth of York- a Tudor and Her World. One of Alison’s books, The Life of Elizabeth I, was one of New York Times best sellers. Weir

She knows her history very well, and her providing us wit her knowledge really helps us feel like we were part of it. This book makes you feel like you know Queen Elizabeth I first hand. The book is based upon secondary sources only because Alison Weir was not alive during the time period of Queen Elizabeth I. Weir uses a very large amount of sources for her book become something very special. There is about sixteen pages in the back of the book that provide us with the sources that she used throughout the book. Some of these sources include: Asham, Rodger: Opera (1703), Bacon, Sir Francis: Collected works (ed. J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis, and D.D. Heath, 1857-74), and Camden, Williams: The History of the Most Renowned and Virtuous Princess. These sources are used throughout the book, which help her explain Queen Elizabeth I’s life. The author uses all her sources she found like she came from herself. This book can make you feel different about how you felt before about Queen Elizabeth I. Weir goes into tremendous details about Elizabeth I’s life, and you can tell she really cares about what she is doing. At the end of the book Weir adds a review about movies that are about Queen Elizabeth I, which adds a fun thing to the book itself. This also goes to show how she feels towards Queen Elizabeth I and about History itself. She talks about the ones that she feels are a good portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I, and then others that

You could really get benefit from this book, and it really gets you excited about history. The importance of this book is a seven out of ten. I feel like this book is important to read if you want to really understand the Tudor Family. I do not really think there are many flaws in this book. I think the book gives incredible detail. The only bad thing would be is that some things she just cannot really explain any farther into detail. That is not her fault; it is only because there is not anything about it in history. The book overall provides you with outstanding background about Queen Elizabeth I. In the back of the book, Weir provides us with some Genealogical Tables. These tables provide the readers with the family and how they fall on the family tree. It shows the names of the people, and the years of their lives. I feel like this can really help you if you look back and forth during the time you are reading. Some of the names in the genealogical tables are shown throughout the book, and it is kind of cool to be able to see when they lived. The writer really uses her own personal style when writing this book. She has a very clean and precise style in writing. You can truly understand it and you can even expose some funny parts in her writing. One amazing quote in her book is about what kind of wardrobe Queen Elizabeth wears. The way she words this is incredible. Weir describes how she likes to wear certain